Người học chữa bài cho người học trong phát triển kỹ năng viết

LISTS OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes Table 2: Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes indicated in the

TrÞnh ThÞ Thanh Xu©n

PEER- FEEDBACK IN IMPROVING WRITING SKILLS: PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND SECOND-YEAR NON- ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

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tr-êng §¹i häc Kinh Doanh vµ C«ng NghÖ Hµ Néi

MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

1.2 Aims of the study and research questions 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definitions of feedback to students’ writing 5

2.2 Types of feedback to students’ writing 6

2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in

the teaching and learning of writing 8 2.4 Guiding principles for effective peer written feedback 11

CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY

3.1 The current situation of teaching and learning writing at HUBT 15

CHAPTER 4: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION

4.1.1 Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’

written feedback 22 4.2 Students’ perception on peer written feedback 24

4.2.1 Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the

4.2.2 Students’ perceived difficulties in providing

suggestions for the mistakes in their peers’ writing 29 4.2.3 Students’ perception on the advantage

4.2.4 Students’ perception on the disadvantage

4.3 Improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback 37

4.4 Implications of using peer written feedback in improving

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

References

Appendices

LISTS OF TABLES

Table 1: Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes

Table 2: Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions

for the mistakes indicated in their peers’ writings 30 Table 3: Students’ improvement in grammar and vocabulary after

Table 4: Students’ improvement in grammar after receiving peer

Table 5: Students’ improvement in vocabulary after receiving

LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Teachers' perception on students’ written feedback 20 Figure 2: Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’ written feedback 21 Figure3: Teachers’ perception on the disadvantage of students’ written feedback 22 Figure 4:Students’ perception on peer written feedback 24 Figure 5: Students’ perception on the advantage of peer written feedback 34 Figure 6: Students’ perception on the disadvantage of peer written feedback 36

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 The rationale of the study

Nowadays, English is considered to be one of the key factors that help our country make faster progress on the way of industrialization, modernization and integrate into the world Therefore, the demand to master English, that is to use the four language skills fluently, is becoming essential to students in general and students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT) in particular Of the four language skills, writing seems to be the most difficult but really important skill among the other three: listening, reading, and speaking, because it is especially necessary for students to acquire English for Specific Purpose (ESP) lessons in their academic program Thus, one of the vital responsibilities of English teachers is

to help students enhance their writing skills With the effort to help students improve their writing skills, peer feedback is employed in the writing classes at HUBT

The use of peer feedback especially peer written feedback can be regarded as one of the most significant applications in the writing classes Feedback plays a very crucial role in motivating further learning as it informs learners about their level of English proficiency or their needs for improvement Brown (1994) considers feedback as one of the keys to successful learning Chiu (2008), Zhang (2008), Min (2006) and Paulus (1999) have also proved that feedback constitutes an important aspect of fostering the improvement of writing Paulus (1999) has found that peer feedback helps students discover whether they communicate successfully and encourages them to revise to improve their texts Moreover, peer feedback is also regarded as

a powerful way in improving critical thinking and evaluation of the real audience rather than the traditional teachers’ responses (Berg, 1999, Hyland, 2003, Topping, 1998, cited in Chiu, 2008) Furthermore, peer written feedback can reduce the heavy workload of marking for teachers when students get used to with this activity

However, still there has not much concern about this activity among teachers at HUBT There have been some studies on giving feedback on writing, but they mainly focus on the ways teachers provide feedback Moreover, the assessment of progress made by students in writing after receiving peer written feedback seems not to be highlighted Thus, a study on “Peer-feedback in improving writing skills: Perceptions of teachers and second-year non-English

major students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology” should be carried on

1.2 Aims of the study and research questions

This research is designed to investigate teachers and students’ perceptions on peer feedback in improving writing skills at Hanoi University of Business and Technology The aims of the study are to find out teachers’ and students’ perceptions of written feedback provided by peer students on their writings and the improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback The thesis also hope to propose some implications for the teaching and learning writing using peer written feedback and provide some suggestions for the further studies

To gain these aims, the research questions are as follows:

1 What are teachers’ perceptions on students’ written feedback?

2 What are students’ perceptions on peer written feedback?

3 How do students improve their writings after receiving peer written feedback?

1.3 Scope of the study

In practice, students can provide peer feedback in both oral and written forms on their peer writings However, within the framework of this minor thesis, the study only focuses on the peer written feedback in writing paragraph among second year non-major English students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology

1.4 Significance of the study

Theoretically, the study proves that peer written feedback is very important to the teaching and learning of writing Peer written feedback has a number of advantages Peer written feedback

is considered to give both readers and writers more chances for collaboration, consideration and reflection than oral negotiation

Practically, the study indicates that using peer written feedback not only reduces the marking load of teachers but also improves students’ learning efficiency in writing And when students spend time reading their peers’ writings, they may become more critical readers and efficient writers

1.5 Methods of the study

In order to obtain adequate information for the study, two methods- document analysis and survey- were used

First, 100 students’ first drafts were analyzed to find out how students provide written feedback to their peers’ writings; then these drafts were compared to the second ones to see whether the peer written feedback helps students improve their writings

Second, the survey questionnaire was done on 100 students and 30 teachers to find out their perceptions on students’ written feedback in the improvement of writing skills

1.6 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1- Introduction- briefly presents the rationale, the aims, research questions, scope as well as the significance and organization of the study

Chapter 2- Literature review- discusses the literature related to the feedback in writing, types

of feedback to students’ writing, advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback

in the teaching and learning of writing as well as the guiding principles for effective peer written feedback

Chapter 3- The methodology- describes the current situation of the teaching and learning writing at HUBT and the methodology dealing with the participants, instrumentation, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure

Chapter 4- Data Presentation and Discussion- analyzes and discusses the data then draws the implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback

Chapter 5- Conclusion- summarizes the main findings of the study, states its limitations and offers suggestions for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definitions of peer feedback

The term “feedback” has been defined in various ways, among which the one by Liu and Hansen (2002) is one of the most comprehensive Liu and Hansen considers feedback as “the use of learners as sources of information and interactants for each in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by formally trained teacher, tutor, or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both written and oral formats in the process in the process of writing” (p.75) Simply stated, peer feedback in writing involves sharing one’s writing with a group of peer readers who offer feedback and suggestions for improvement Due to the great effect of peer feedback on students’ revision in particular and

on students’ writing skill in general, teachers have increasingly required their students’ responsibility for not only their own writings but also for those of their peers According to Keh, feedback is “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of proving the information to the writer for revision” (1990, p.294) In other words, after reading the others’ writing, the reader gives comments, questions and suggestions with a purpose to help him/her

revise the writing

Second language writing research (Hedgcock and Lefkowitz, 1992 and Paulus, 1990) has found that peer feedback comments can lead to meaningful revisions, and that compared with the teacher feedback, revisions based on peer comment can be better in vocabulary, organization and content Moreover, peer feedback was considered a necessary component in the process writing approach As Raimes notes, “response to students’ writing is very much a part of the process of teaching writing” (1983, p.139) If students write only one draft which is then graded by the teacher, feedback on what is wrong in the composition comes too late Therefore, feedback should be provided in the process of writing That means feedback is crucial for the success of the writing task

2.2 Types of feedback to students’ writing

Feedback to students’ writing consists of three major types These types to writing texts are: teacher’s feedback, self-assessment and peer feedback

2.2.1 Teacher’s feedback

It is no doubt that teacher written feedback “can not be ignored” in teaching and learning writing However, concerning the matter of teacher’s written feedback, there exists a huge number of unfavorably understanding so far It raises the question of whether teacher’ kind of correction and comment match students’ expectations (Murphy, 1994) or still presents a mismatch (Charles, 1990)

A factor that possibly leads to the failure of the teachers’ feedback is the mismatch between students and teachers’ preferences for comments Cohen (1987) and Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) reported that students preferred to receive more feedback on content but were getting more feedback on grammar and mechanics To improve the quality of feedback, teachers must decide whether to focus on form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, mechanics) or on content (e.g., organization and amount of detail) And studies from different language researchers indicate that learners’ writing skills may improve with teacher feedback that focuses on content rather than on form Some researchers have been exploring strategies that can enhance the effectiveness of teachers’ comment Connor and Farmer (1990) proposed that students should involve in analyzing certain characteristic of their own text This will enable students to evaluate their own writing and can lead to high success rate

2.2.2 Self-assessment

Self-assessment has been given much attention in recent years owning to a growing emphasis

on learner autonomy and their significant pedagogic value Wei and Chen (2004) state that

“Self-assessment encourages students to look critically and analytically at their writing and to take more responsibility for what they write Being involved in the process of self-evaluation, the students are no longer simply passive recipients of feedback, but become active participants in evaluation” Moreover, they also believe that self-assessment also opens up opportunities for exchanges of opinions between teacher and student In fact, if a learner is aware of self-assessment and tries to learn from his/her own errors, he/she will be able to overcome difficulties in learning than others who do not care why they fail However, to make self-assessment useful, the teacher should offer chance for teacher-student interaction and provide student with correction codes to work with

2.2.3 Peer feedback

Peer feedback is a practice in language education where feedback given by one student to

another Peer feedback is used in writing classes to provide students more opportunities to learn from each other After students finish a writing assignment, the instructor has two or more than two students work together to check each other's work and give comments to the peer partner Comments from peers are called as peer feedback Peer feedback can be in the form of corrections, opinions, suggestions, ideas to each other Thus, peer feedback is a two-way process in which one cooperates with the other Peer feedback can be oral or/and written Oral peer feedback, as presented in Mittan's classic article (1989), calls for students to work in groups of four or five Each student gives one copy of her/his paper to every member of the group Then, usually out of class for homework, each group member reads the other students' papers and prepares a response to each of them, using focus questions provided by the teacher

In the next class, students give oral comments on each paper they read, as well as ask and answer clarifying questions Each student then uses this feedback from the other group members to rewrite her/his paper

According to Nat Bartels (2004), in recent years teachers have changed and expanded methods

of conducting peer feedback For example, many teachers now train their students in how to

give positive, useful feedback and give them practice in evaluating written work They do this based on research of Stanley (1992) Zhu (1995) and McGroarty and Zhu (1997) shows that untrained students tend to focus on surface errors rather than on organization or style Besides, Nelson and Murphy (1992) state that feedback formulated in a negative way can be more discouraging than helpful Instead of having their students give oral feedback to their peers in

a group setting, many teachers today have students write a response, which is then given directly to the author of the paper After receiving this written feedback, students are given time to read it and ask any questions or seek clarification about what their peers wrote As in oral peer response, this feedback is then used to write the final draft of the paper Bartels (2004) has also found that, when oral peer response is possible, there are advantages to having students give written responses to their peers' writing

2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and

2.3.1 Advantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing

Many researchers have reported a large number of benefits which peer written feedback brings

to students’ revision as well as their writing skill Bartels (2004) believes peer feedback can help create the feeling of being an audience for both the writers and the peer readers Unlike oral feedback, peer feedback can bring students many chances for “communicative writing”

In other words, by giving and receiving peer written feedback, the reviewers can express their desire to provide useful comments and the receivers can show their aspire to create better writing versions next time

Besides, Bartels (2004) further states that feedback can provide students opportunities for

“instant feedback and negotiation of meaning” Although negotiation of meaning is considered

a vital element in language learning, it is difficult to create situations in which students have the opportunity to negotiate meaning in regard to their writing However, when students get written responses to their writing, they spontaneously request clarification, argue about the responses and ask questions such as "What exactly do you mean by…?" "What about this paragraph did you find confusing?" or "Don't you think it would be a little boring if I added more detail here, as you suggested?" By giving their peers instant feedback and opportunity for negotiation of meaning about the peer-written responses, students can have more chance for language learning

Moreover, Rollinson (2005) also states that peer feedback is of different kind from that of the teacher He says that teacher feedback is rather general whereas student responses are more specific In the same line, he lists out some advantages of peer feedback over teacher feedback: Peer response operates on a more informal level than teacher response This may encourage or motivate writers, or at least provide a change from the more one-way interaction between the teacher and the student, where student may end up making revisions without necessarily agreeing with or even understanding the teacher’s authoritative comments, to two-way process where students can exchange their opinions, express their ideas, negotiate with their readers about their ideas

Another advantage of peer feedback is that every student has opportunity to give and receive peer response (Bartels, 2004) If a student misses class the day that oral peer response is done, she/he does not receive any feedback on her/his writing and misses the opportunity to give feedback to her/his peers With written peer response, students can still give and receive feedback, even if they miss the class Giving this responsibility to students may also foster learner independence

Besides, peer response activities in teaching second language writing can force second language students to exercise their thinking as opposed to passively receive information from the teacher (Mittan, 1989) In peer response, students can engage in unrehearsed, low-risk, exploratory talk that is less feasible in whole-class and teacher-student interactions and take an active role in their learning Responding to peers’ writing can build the critical skills needed to analyze and revise one’s own writing Moreover, the suggestions an explanation offered during the peer response activities allow students to show what they know about writing and

to use that information in their revisions The act that writers revise their essays based on their peers’ comments suggests that students in peer response activities have “develop the crucial ability of reviewing their writing with the eye of another” (Zamel, 1983: 206)

Finally, doing peer written feedback can save teachers’ time, especially in large classes Many

teachers feel that they do not have enough time for oral peer response during class because it can be a time consuming process With written peer response, however, class time does not have to be spent on preparing feedback Also, in large classes, teachers often do not have enough time to write thorough comments on each student's paper Written peer responses provide students with thorough feedback, because peer reviewers will notice different aspects

of the paper (Caulk, 1994)

In conclusion, written peer response can be very useful in a wide variety of classes Written

peer response can also be valuable in classes where improving speaking skills is just as important as improving writing skills In fact, written responses produce just as much conversation and negotiation as oral responses Overall, this technique can be instrumental in helping students understand the process of writing and become independent thinkers and writers

2.3.2 Disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing

While positive findings seemed to confirm teachers' and researchers' perception that peers' feedback was beneficial to students, problems emerged One of the major problems is that the quality of the responses was questioned; students felt that their peers offered unspecific, unhelpful and even incorrect feedback because they lacked the knowledge of the target language or the knowledge in certain specific content areas (Allaei & Connor, 1990) In this case, students hardly learn from others, so peer feedback loses track of its original rationale to help the other get improvement

Another problem with peer written feedback is the student characteristics Many students may not easily accept the idea that their peers are qualified enough to evaluate their writing (Rollinson, 2005); therefore, they may need a significant amount of initial persuasion of the value of peer written feedback Besides, some students may feel uncomfortable to give critical comments because they want to maintain group harmony In addition, students sometimes become reluctant to share impressions with their peers for fear of hurting the other person feelings

Finally, applying peer written feedback in writing classes may be time consuming Rollinson (2005) points out that the peer written feedback itself is a lengthy one The process of peer written feedback often includes reading a draft (probably more than one), making notes, then write the comments All these activities will certainly consume a significant amount of time

2.4 Guiding principles for effective peer written feedback

The key to making peer written response a welcome component in writing classrooms lies in teacher planning and student training, and therefore the guiding principles given below as Hansen

and Lui (2005) stated emphasize three stages: pre-peer written feedback, during peer written feedback and after peer written feedback

2.4.1 Pre-peer written feedback

Soares (2008) believes that simply asking students to work in pairs exchanging ideas about their papers is no guarantee that the activity will achieve its goals in helping learners to revise their writing For peer feedback to play its proper role in the writing instruction, a well-planned implementation process is needed

First, teachers can help students approach the feedback task by providing them with a checklist According to Raimes (1983, p 147), it is a very useful tool as a starting point for

training because it directs the students’ attention to the elements which should be focused on The checklist includes a set of yes / no questions to be answered relating to the features of the writing A model checklist can be introduced to offer the support students may need as regards what to comment on This can be done by distributing a copy of the material to students and going through each item on the list, discussing its content to ensure that everybody understands what each of the questions aims at Next, students can receive a sample text to be analyzed individually As students go through the checklist, they should write down their answers to each question, identifying in the text the elements which support their opinion

Second, Zeng (2006) suggests that teachers should make the students to know what to do and how to do in the peer feedback activities He advises to give students a passage or a paragraph

as a model and show them how to give feedback It is necessary at this stage to clarify that peer feedback is not simply to correct grammar mistakes, (despite the fact that the grammatical mistakes always easily catch one’s eyes) but to think about interact with the writer to understand what the writer is talking about Therefore, students should think from

several perspectives correspondently such as the content, the organization, and finally the grammar Doing this way can also help students get rid of bias in correcting others’ errors

Besides, teachers can provide students with some useful expressions as “linguistic strategies” to comment on their peers’ writings (Hansen and Lui, 2005) For example, if a point is not clear, or

if the reader has perceived that the writer has made an error, rather than saying ‘This is wrong’, the reader can soften the expression by saying ‘I am not sure if this is right’, or ‘Could you explain what you wanted to say here?’ Moreover, it is important to train students to ask questions that generate a response from the writer, and that are revision-oriented so that there

is a meaningful discussion about the content, rhetoric, or grammar of the writing, depending on the purpose of the activity

2.4.2 During peer written feedback

First, teachers form pairs or groups (groups of three or four are preferable to larger groups) (Rollinson, 2005) Then, students exchange their first draft, read it silently and correct the mistakes based on the checklist Teachers’ role at this stage in the class becomes a monitor and a helper if necessary Timing is another thing that teacher should control in this stage Teacher should tell students when to have discussion end or when to write their ideas on the written sheet Moreover, teacher can take notes on some common items or some difficulties in order

to explain them in front of the class

2.4.3 After peer written feedback

As Hansen and Liu (2005) mentioned, it is very important for students to have a reflection on what they have done in the peer feedback as well as their thinking on their peers’ feedback At this stage, students may find their mistakes but still doubt on the way to correct them It is necessary to have negotiation between the reader and the writer as they exchange opinions on the text and that they are free to agree or disagree with what is said This procedure makes

students more involved in understanding their peers’ comments After all these steps, teacher may collect ideas from the students and information about the process of the activities He/she can build the lectures from students’ exploratory feedback and teach to their questions which can make students “more attentive because they know that their questions, their words, and their names might suddenly appear in the lecture” (Zeng, 2006) Finally, after knowing the strengths and the weaknesses of the writing, students are given opportunities to make changes,

or rewrite their text before handing it to the teacher

In short, teachers play an important role in the success of effective organization of peer feedback

2.5 Summary

This chapter deals with the literature review of the study, which helps the researcher a comprehensive understanding of the issues regarding the focus of the study The chapter has discussed the feedback in writing, types of feedback to students’ writing, advantages and disadvantages of doing peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing as well as the guiding principles for effective peer written feedback Views and results of previous studies presented in the chapter will serve as the foundation for the study and the study also draws some implications to improve the overall situation of using peer written feedback among second-year students at HUBT Moreover, this chapter also presents the research context for peer written feedback which helps further understand the setting of the study The next chapter will present the study’s methodology used in the study

CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY

3.1 The current situation of teaching and learning writing at HUBT

All students at HUBT share the same English course for the first seven terms They study

Market Leader – Elementary in the first year, Market Leader – Pre-Intermediate in the second year and Market Leader – Intermediate in the third year In the last term students study ESP

and do some preparation for TOEIC as well

In each of the English course book as such, there are twelve lessons In these lessons, students have chances to broaden their knowledge in different aspects of language and they can also practice the four basic language skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing After each lesson, students are usually asked to write a paragraph or an e-mail based on the topic of the lesson using vocabulary and grammar they have learnt Then their works are hand in to the teachers who make comments and give marks to their writings In general, students, when receiving their works checked, tend to focus on their mark given rather than to the meticulous comments provided by the teacher Although marking students’ writings costs teachers so much time, the comments they made seem to be not very useful to motivate students and help them improve their writing skills Therefore, the writing tasks are a burden on both teachers and students and they seem unwilling to do this task

3.2 The participants

The participants chosen for the study are 30 teachers from English department and 100 students from three second-year classes who are studying the text-book Market leader at pre intermediate level Thirty English teachers randomly selected for the study are those who have been teaching writing for second-year students and have ever applied peer written feedback in their writing lessons Therefore, the result would be more reliable Similarly to the teacher’s sampling procedure, with about 48 classes of 30 students on average, which made out for

about 1440 students in total, the number of students joining the survey was about 100 informants which come from three second-year classes These 100 second-year students are in their second semester of the academic year 2008-2009 at HUBT were chosen randomly for the study Because this was a small-scale study, this number of subjects seemed to be reasonable and manageable Most of these informants’ level of English proficiency is pre – intermediate though in reality, some students maybe at a lower or higher one Moreover, the target population also belongs to two genders and different levels of writing proficiency, which contributed to cover various kinds of second- year students as informants Besides, student writing samples can be considered as the most important and indispensable subject of the research To gain more reliability and validity for the study, 100 writing papers of the students involved in the study were selected The papers were written on the same topic and at the same period of time to make the analysis more reliable and valid

3.3 Instrumentation

To collect sufficient, reliable and valid data for the study, two main instruments were used They were documents analysis of students’ peer written feedback and the survey questionnaire for students and teachers

Documents analysis of students’ peer written feedback

The second-year students have to study twelve lessons of the Market Leader- pre intermediate

with twelve different topics such work and leisure, food and entertainment, travel, sales, people, markets, job, etc And students have to complete twelve writing tasks related to those

topics However, 100 writing sheets with peer written feedback provided by the students in one writing task were collected randomly It is hoped to gain the most truthful information concerning to the current practice of peer written feedback giving among the second-year students at HUBT and consider what benefits of the feedback students get

The following criteria based on the checklist (Appendix 2) are used to analyze the peer written feedback

(Yes/No)

1.Paragraph organization

a Topic sentence:

+Grammatically correct + convey the controlling idea + too general or too specific

(1) (2) (3)

c Concluding sentence + summarize the paragraph

+ relevant to the topic of the paragraph

d Coherence: + proper transitional signals

2 Grammar Indicating the mistakes Providing suggestions

for the mistakes

a The use of verb

b The use of articles

c The use of prepositions

d The use of punctuation

3 Vocabulary Indicating the mistakes Providing suggestions

for the mistakes

Questionnaires for teachers and students

The questionnaires were done to collect data answering for the research questions and had the same set for teachers and for students In the questionnaires, different questions were categorized in groups following the research questions There are two parts in the questionnaires: Part 1 of the questionnaires for both teachers and students consisted of three sections with 13 questions The first section which contained questions 1 was done to investigate teachers’ and students’ opinions about the helpfulness of peer written response The second section having five items addressed the reason(s) why teachers and students think peer written feedback is helpful to students’ writings Seven questions in the third section were

to answer the reason(s) why teachers and students think peer written feedback is unhelpful to students’ writings.Part 2 of the questionnaire having 12 items addressed the question: “what are your perceived difficulties when giving feedback to your peer’ writings?” In general, it

can be said that the data collected from the questionnaires could answer the research questions; however, along with writing samples analysis, the outcome could yield more reliable and valuable

3.4 Data collection procedure

The procedures of data collection went through two main phases in chronological order: analyzing writings samples and delivering questionnaires At the first phase, to gain more reliability and validity for the study, 100 students’ first drafts and their second drafts were collected randomly from 100 students of three classes at different levels of writing proficiency Additionally, the writing papers were on the same topic and at the same period of time These two writing versions were analyzed to see the differences by counting the mistakes made, mistakes pointed out and mistakes corrected in terms of the main aspects including paragraph organization, grammar, vocabulary and general written comments

The next phase was the survey questionnaires for students and teachers 130 sheets of the questionnaires were distributed to the 100 second-year students and 30 English teachers at the end of the term and returned in full Before asking the respondents to do the survey questionnaires, the researcher briefly explained the format, the length and clarified any misunderstanding about the survey questions while completing the items, emphasized confidentiality and most importantly emphasized the significance of the results

3.5 Data analysis procedure

Initially, the collected data were examined and classified according to three research questions That is, all of the data gathered from the comparison of the students’ first drafts and the second drafts rewritten using the peer written feedback to answer the first and second research questions whereas data gathered from the survey questionnaire would reply to the third research question

3.6 Summary

The third chapter gave a view on the methodology of the research including participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure Based on the aims of the study, the using of questionnaires and writing sample analysis was considered as the best choice to collect the thorough and in-depth information from the respondents and can make the data gained afterward reliable and comprehensive All those findings will be presented and discussed in the next chapter

CHAPTER 4: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION

Chapter 4 plays a very important part in the study It serves two functions: giving a

presentation on the data collected by means of survey questionnaire and student writing

analysis; making interpretation based on the data In this chapter, the findings from the survey

questionnaire were reported before the findings from student writing analysis

4.1 Teachers’ perception of student written feedback

I think peer written feedback

is helpful (73%)

I think peer written feedback

is unhelpful (27%)

Figure 1: Teachers' perception of student written feedback

On being asked about the perception of peer written in writing skill, about two third (73%) of the teachers agreed that peer written feedback is helpful to students’ writing However, nearly one third (27%) of them held a contradict opinion They stated that peer response was not of great assistance to students’ writings These two groups of respondents were then required to answer a further question to clarify the reasons why they found that student written feedback was helpful or unhelpful to students’ writing Their explanations are illustrated in Figure 2 and

3

4.1.1 Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’ written feedback

Figure 2: Reason(s) why teachers think peer written feedback is helpful

A: Students can revise their writings effectively based on their friends’ correction and suggestion

B: Students can avoid the corrected mistakes next time

C: Students can enhance their confidence in writing thanks to their friends’ encouraging feedback

D: Students can learn how to comment from the way their friends correct their writings E: Students can improve their writing skill in general thanks to their friends’ peer feedback

According to Figure 2, the teachers who said that peer written feedback was helpful were also asked to clarify their answers Of the 30 teachers, 17 teachers (57%) said that thanks to students’ correction and suggestion, students could revise their writings more effectively Meanwhile, about 54% of the respondents stated that students could benefit from their peer written feedback by avoiding the corrected mistakes next time This means that peer written

feedback could be generalized for later use to other writing assignments Besides, only 5% of whom considered that student feedback could help students feel more confident in their writing skill It can be implied that although positive feedback was still utilized, encouraging comments and even praise were not enough to develop students’ confidence in their writing ability In addition, nearly a half of the respondents stated that thanks to observing the peer written feedback students received from their friends, they could learn the way to give comments more effectively Most significantly, 64% - the highest percentage of teachers considered that peer written feedback, in general, improved students’ writing skill It can be inferred that in teachers’ opinion, peer written feedback played a very important role in helping students improve their writing ability In contrast, there were only 8 out of 30 teachers responding to the question to clarify why they thought that peer written feedback was unhelpful This small number of teachers proved that the majority of the survey respondents agreed that peer written feedback was really effective Teachers’ explanations for their choice are presented in Figure 3

4.1.2 Teachers’ perception on the disadvantage of students’ written feedback

Figure 3: Reason (s) why teachers think peer written feedback is unhelpful

A: Students’ feedback is too general

B: Students’ feedback is too vague and difficult to understand

C: Students’ feedback contradicts their friends’ ideas

D: Students’ feedback is not reliable

E: Students’ feedback is too negative, so discourages students

F: Students’ feedback includes too many new words and structures

G: Students’ feedback includes too many correction codes which are hard to understand

As can be seen from figure 3, a high percentage of 7 respondents (23%) stated that peer written feedback was unhelpful because it was too general In this case, too general comments could lead to lack of understanding or even misunderstanding between the commentators and the comment receivers Within the researcher’ prediction, this finding showed that general feedback seemed to be much easier and more convenient to compose than a detailed one Too negative feedback was the second most common reason for teachers' undervaluing peer written feedback (5 out of 30 respondents (16%)) Maybe, these 5 teachers thought that too negative comments or even criticism may discourage students and make them think that those are not helpful comments which ensure the best results Vague feedback was also mentioned

by 13% of 4 respondents as a cause of teachers’ devaluating peer written feedback This was easily understood because vague feedback could lead to misunderstanding and hence could not help the writers find it easy to revise their writings In addition, feedback which contradicted the writers’ ideas and unreliable comments were also mentioned by 11% and 14% respectively

as two causes of teachers’ underestimation of peer written feedback The fact that some teachers did not rely on students’ comments can be explained by the different levels of writing proficiency in each class In other words, in fact some students were better at writing than others Lastly, feedback including many new words and structures as well as correction codes

was also regarded as a cause of students’ negative attitude towards peer written feedback However, not many teachers (only 2 and 1 respectively out of 30 teachers) chose these reasons for their explanation although it could not be denied that new words and structures as well as correction codes were still a hindrance for non major second-year students

4.2 Students’ perception on peer written feedback

Regarding to the perception on peer written feedback, like the teachers, there was a great number of the students agreeing on the helpfulness of peer written feedback to their writings The proportion of students who admitted the helpfulness was still much higher than that of denying with 88% over 12% (as shown in figure 4 below)

Figure 4:Students’ perception on peer written feedback

However, when giving feedback to peer’s writing, students involve in two main tasks, that is: indicating the mistakes and providing suggestions for a better version The findings show that students still face some difficulties when doing these tasks The following part will cover some difficulties that students faced in certain aspects of the paragraph and address reasons why they think that peer written feedback is helpful or unhelpful to their writings

I think peer written feedback

is helpful (88%)

I think peer written feedback

is unhelpful (12%)