4.2.2 Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of peer feedback in tertiary English
4.2.2.3 Students’ perceptions towards the disadvantages of peer feedback
Descriptive Statistics of Students’ perceptions towards the disadvantages of peer feedback
No. Items N Mean St. D
28 Using peer feedback is time consuming. 97 4.07 .881 29 Peer feedback is not as reliable as teacher’s feedback. 97 4.47 .614 30 Negative peer feedback might make peers lose face. 97 2.86 1.199 31 Negative peer feedback might break friendship. 97 2.64 1.284 32 Teachers might not be comfortable to hand over their
responsibility to students. 97 2.56 1.127
As can be referred in Table 4.11, the highest mean score belongs to item 29 with M= 4.47 and St. D = .614, which means that half of the students strongly agreed that comments from peers were not as qualifying as those of teachers. In other words, it can be perceived that comments from teachers are much more
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academic and reliable. Although students expressed the enjoyment towards the practice of giving and receiving feedback from peers in writing activities, it can be denied that peer feedback could not replace teachers’ correction, especially in writing skills that need students to produce accurate performance on paper. Peer feedback is useful in case that teachers are full of workload since it can help teacher lessen the time for reading and correction students’ work. The most important is that teachers’ feedback is the last stage that determines the quality of a writing paper. Results from the interview also reflect the same viewpoint that most of the teachers and students showed their deep concern about the quality as well as reliability of those who played the role of feedback givers in peer implementation.
Regarding teachers, they seem to doubt the efficacy of feedback from students. The following excerpts specifically illustrates their concerns.
One teacher said:
“It is undeniable that peer feedback benefited students a lot in their learning writing skills and helped them become more motivated in writing essays. However, in my class, peer feedback focused only on surface mistakes including grammar, vocabulary and spelling. Especially, my students are at low level of proficiency, so their corrections cannot be trusted. With those who are weak at grammar, they sometimes transform a grammatical sentence into a wrong one.” (T1)
Other teacher shared:
“Although peers’ comments make students more relaxed rather those of mine, I still suspected the accuracy of the comments they gave to each other.” (T3)
One idea was:
“Although peer correction among students may make me less tired, their correction must be under careful check to make sure that their comments are correct.” (T4)
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As for students, although enjoying this type of correcting practice, they still wished that they would receive more comments from teachers rather than those of peers because teachers are definitely more knowledgeable.
One students expressed:
“I feel like I made so many mistakes in my writing drafts. I need good correction to improve my work. Unfortunately, my peer’s level is at the same as mine. So, how can I believe on her feedback? I need more qualifying comments that really help me.” (S3)
Another idea was:
“No one can replace the role of teachers in class, especially their feedback, even the best student. My peer truly helped me, but I believe in comments from teacher the most.” (S8)
The second highest mean score place on item 28 (M= 4.07, St. D= .881) which indicates that it is time consuming to apply peer feedback activities in writing classes with the agreement of all of the students. This is may be because it is a waste of time when the effort to organize peer practice became a failure and students lack concentration and willing to join the activities. Data from the interview are consistent with those of the questionnaire.
One teacher approved:
“Sometimes my students spend much time on clarifying what they should do on their peer’s work, so the time duration for explanation is quite long. Even, my students fail to do a check because they are lazy. Time goes by without any expected results” (T2)
Other teacher claimed:
“In peer feedback practice, students spend time writing their drafts and correcting for each other. Sometimes I have to explain what students should do again in case they forgot my instructions. I have to wait for their completion.” (T3)
84 On student said:
“Personally, I think peer check is impractical because it happened in chaos atmosphere in which we spend a lot of time just reading and checking for errors. Even, it takes more time when my peer and I do not reach an agreement on the mistakes.
That’s a waste of time.” (S9)
On the contrary, with the mean scores are respectively M= 2.86&2.64 and St.
D=1.199 &1.284, about half of the students disagreed that negative peer feedback negatively influenced on their peers’ faces (item 30) and was harmful for their friendship (item 31). It means that they do not think that using peer cause disadvantages in terms of face losing and friendship broken. For students, they knew this type of correction is in class only, which is not related to social relations.
Or, they recognized that the advantages outweigh the opposite. Data collected from the interviews concurs with what were found in the questionnaire. Some of the interviewees responded:
One student shared:
“I do not think that my peer is vulnerable after my comments, especially the negative ones. In contrast, my feedback is useful for them in terms of grammar and vocabulary.” (S10)
Another added:
“We have been friends from the high school and I know him well. He will not get angry easily when receiving negative comments on his essays.”(S6)
Similarly, nearly all of the student strongly disagreed that their teachers might not be comfortable to hand over their responsibility to them (item 32) with M= 2.56 and St. D= 1.127. On the other hand, they think that peer feedback can be useful for teachers because they can reduce the time for checking mistakes in students’ paper traditionally. With student-centered approach, peer practice was
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widely adapted. Data from interview revealed the equivalent responses to this points. Below are some teachers’ and students’ voices.
One teacher said:
“To be honest, peer check reduce pressure on correction. With many classes, I have numerous writing paper to grade. Students locate the errors in their peers’ work. Thus, I spend less time checking and feel less tired.” (T4)
One student agreed:
“I personally think that peer practice contributes to the modern teaching method in writing classes these days. Thus, there is no reason that teachers do not feel comfortable to give duty of checking mistakes to students because teachers still double check up to give marks at the end” (S2)