Researcher question 1 attempted to explore the practice of peer feedback in English writing classes at BLU. The data collected from classroom observations, questionnaire and interview were presented together to obtain triangulation.
In terms of classroom observation, four classroom observations were conducted. In addition to the use of questionnaire to collect data to explore students’
perceptions towards the practices of peer feedback in their writing classes, classroom observations were carried out with the aim at exploring whether teachers used peer feedback and getting a clear understanding of how teachers employed peer feedback in writing lessons and how students got involved in peer correction activities if peer feedback is employed. Data from the classroom observations would much support findings from the questionnaire, thus the reliability of the current study would be soundly confirmed.
In general, classroom observations reflected both teachers’ and students’
reaction in writing classes were specifically probed based on criteria in terms of
55
classroom organization, activities, outcomes, and students’ participation and attitudes. Via classroom observations, it is revealed that (1) peer feedback activities were conducted in four writing classes (CL1, CL2, CL3 and CL4) and (2) students’
involvement was clearly seen in peer feedback session. More specifically, excerpts illustrating what happened in terms of both strengths and shortcomings were presented as follows:
The first observation took place in CL1 on the 6th of May, 2020. The students in this class are second year. The writing task assigned for students was “Write a comparative essay comparing dorm life and life at home”. It was observed that the teacher did not conduct steps in teaching. She forgot informing the objectives of the lesson to the whole class. Therefore, students somehow got confused because what they had to do during the lesson and what products they would made after the lesson. The next step witnessed how she organized the class. Students were divided in pairs. It would be better if she introduced the peer correction to students. After classroom organization, the activities of the lesson were focused. The teacher had gone over the vocabulary related to the topic before she let students brainstorm ideas about the similarities and differences between dorm life and life at home.
Next, when students got the vocabulary clearly, she asked them to write the first draft of the introduction paragraph of the essay in 15 minutes individually and then required them to exchange their drafts to their partners. After that, students were asked to give corrections on grammar, spelling, and vocabulary directly of the drafts. However, timing of peer correction activity was not suitable due to lack of time for students to correct their friends’ drafts in class. Besides, there was also lack of feedback checklists so that students did not know how to give comments in writing assessment. Sometimes they asked their teachers what components they had to give correction. Besides, without careful time set, the peer feedback activity took a lot of time. Even, there was a shortage of teacher’s assistance. Hence, students could not finish correcting mistakes on time. After finishing the correction, she required them to submit the drafts for her check-up. The drafts then were returned
56
after her correction. Regarding students’ participation and attitudes, they seemed to be lazy. It was also observed that they sometimes argued during peer correction. In general, the lesson was not much successful due to the failure of peer feedback activity.
CL2 was observed two days after the first one. The writing topic in chapter 10 was “Write an essay analyzing the factors that lead to success in business”.
Unlike teacher in CL1, the teacher in this class told her students the objectives of the lesson which were the ability of writing an analyzing essay and explained what she was going to do during the lesson. Students in her class were set to sit in groups of four for writing activity. As for teacher’s teaching method and activities, she gradually elicit the topic to students. She asked some questions to warm them up.
The questions were “tell me some famous CEO in Vietnam and worldwide”, “why do you think he/she is famous and successful in business?”, “what makes someone successful in their life?”. Then, she asked students to finished exercise related to the topic of the chapter in groups. After that, she required students to write the first draft of the essay in 60 minutes individually. After finishing the first draft, students were asked to exchange the drafts to each other in their group. The teacher then explained that students were going to correct mistakes to each other. The time duration for correction was about 15 minutes. However, she did not provide any guidance on how to correct mistakes to their peers. It was recognized that the teacher did not provide feedback checklists to the students during the correction.
The students corrected mistakes on their peers’ writing much based on their knowledge. Without feedback checklists, the teacher had to move around a lot for help. Luckily, peer feedback activity ended on time. Witnessing what happened during the lesson, especially in peer activity, the researcher noticed that students were interested in discussing with their peers. However, because there was no good class management, the teacher failed to control students’ activity. Sometimes, they lacked focus on what they were doing.
57
On 10th May, 2020, CL3 was observed. With the writing topic was “Write an essay about a leader you admire”, the teacher conducted steps: pre-writing, while writing and post writing. Teachers asked students to brainstorm the ideas in groups of four on the topic of about a leader. Then she went over the grammar pattern included in the chapter and asked students to use them in the coming essay. Then she asked students to make an outline of the assay. After that, she required students to write and exchange to check if there were any mistakes in their friend’s drafts and correct directly on the drafts. The final version of the essay was finished at home and submitted to her in the next lesson. As observed, several weaknesses were noticed. First, during peer correction, the teacher did not show students how to correct the mistakes. Instead, she just asked them to correct grammar mistakes in their peers’ drafts. The second shortcoming was that peer correction took place so quickly that students could not finish correcting all mistakes. It was also seen that just nearly a half of the students actively took part in peer activity. The others ignored the teacher’s requirements.
The last classroom observation carried in CL4 on 15th May, 2020 revealed the most effective peer feedback employment on the writing topic “Write a descriptive essay about one of the most popular ceremonies in your country”. Like teachers in CL1 and CL3, the teacher in this class first clarified the objectives of the lesson. She also asked students to seriously follow her instructions to achieve the goal of the lesson. In terms of classroom organization, students were put in face-to- face pairs so that it was convenient for them to interact with each other during the process. The next step was for writing activity. The teacher went over the vocabulary related to the topic first. She asked students to brainstorm ideas about the topic of popular ceremonies in pairs. Then, she asked them to make an outline for the coming essay individually. She went around to check if the outline was acceptable and the ideas were comprehensible. Then the students were asked to write a first draft for the essay in 50 minutes individually based on the outline. The next step witnessed the use of peer feedback in pairs. She delivered feedback
58
checklists for each of the students. The checklists consisted of five components such as content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics. In each component, there were specific criteria. Based on those criteria, students evaluated their peers’
work more exactly. It took her about 15 minutes to train students to give constructive feedback. Then, she required students to exchange their drafts to each other. She gave them 15 minutes to correct their peer mistakes and asked them to take notes the correction if possible. During the activity, she became the facilitator by assisting students if needed. After correction, drafts were submitted to her for double check-up. Drafts were then returned after her correction. The last stage was the revision and edition of the final version of the essay. It was seen that students understood how to give comments and how to assess peers’ composition. The goal of the activity was thus achieved. Regarding student participation and attitudes, they not only actively got involved in the activity but also showed their interest to the peer feedback activity. The evidence was that each member in the pairs interacted with their partner well. Besides, their enjoyment to the activity was also noticed.
The teacher also showed her professional class management.
In conclusion, data collected from classroom observations revealed that although peer feedback practice were carried out in all of the four writing classes, not all of them were successful. Three out of four shared the same shortcoming which was the lack of preparation of feedback checklists throughout peer feedback session. Moreover, teachers just focused on surface mistakes including grammar, vocabulary, spelling and mechanics. Indeed, the in-deep mistakes in terms of content was not emphasized. However, the fact that peer feedback was practiced in writing classes is the hint that helps the researcher gain more information for the current study.
Regarding the data collected from the questionnaire, 5 questions were asked.
The tables below display the results.
59 Table 4.1
Descriptive statistics of mistake correction
No. Questionnaire items Number of
respondents
Percentage 1 Does your teacher correct your mistakes in writing
lessons?
Yes
No
97 0
100%
0%
Figure 4.1. Teacher’s correction of mistakes in writing lessons.
Table 4.1 and figure 4.1 illustrate the level of agreement of students on the fact that if teachers correct students’ mistakes in writing lessons. It can be seen that 97 students agreed that their teachers were the ones who gave correction to their writing, accounting 100% in total. It means that teachers always correct students’
mistakes in writing lessons. Teacher correction has widely been the first option of correction in most writing classes so far. This type of correction is seen to be popular in teaching and learning to write in English.
Table 4.2
Descriptive statistics of methods of correction
No. Questionnaire items Number of
respondents
Percentage 2 How does your teacher correct your mistakes in
writing lessons?
Teacher correction
Yes 100 100%
60 No
Self-correction Yes
No
Peer correction Yes
No
0 19 78 79 18
0%
19.6%
80.4%
81.4%
18.6%
Figure 4.2. Frequency of methods of correction
As can be seen in table 4.2 and the three figures that follow, the frequency of teacher correction, self-correction and peer correction is clearly presented to explore the types of correction that were implemented in writing lessons. Regarding the teacher correction, 97 students agreed that their compositions were corrected by their teacher, which accounts absolutely 100%. As for self-correction, 19 students (19.6%) agreed that they themselves corrected their own work. However, the frequency of disagreement is much higher, accounting for 80.4%. It means that self- correction takes place in writing classes with quite low frequency. Meanwhile, the frequency of peer feedback is quite high with 79 students who had agreement on the existence of this type of correction. Thus, the percentage is high as well, taking 81.4% whereas the numbers of students who did not agree that there was no any peer correction in their class was 18, only accounting 18.6%. These statistic evidence affirmed that peer feedback was applied in writing classes with high
Self-correction Peer correction
Teacher correction
61
frequency. In summary, all of the three types of correction: teacher correction, self- correction and peer correction were used with different level of frequency. Among these, teacher correction is on the first rank while the frequency of self-correction and that of peer correction are nearly the same and take lower percentage. It is apparent that teacher correction is always a priority in teaching and assessing writing. Furthermore, it is delighted that both self- and peer correction have remarkable roles in writing classes.
Table 4.3
Descriptive statistics of frequency of mistake correction
No. Questionnaire items Number of
respondents
Percentage 3 How often does your teacher ask you to correct
mistakes for each other in writing lessons?
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Always
25 42 22 8
25.8%
43.3%
22.7%
8.2%
Figure 4.3. Frequency of mistake correction
62
Data presented in Table 4.3 describes the frequency of how often teachers asked students to correct mistakes for one another in writing classes. Accordingly, 25 students (25.8%) agreed that they were rarely asked to correct their peers’
writing. It can also be seen that nearly a half of students respondents agreed that teachers sometimes asked them to correct mistakes for their peers, which occupies 43.3%. The last two frequency including often and always take in order 22.7% and 8.2%. To sum up, data displayed in table 4.3 and illustration from chart 4.3 are consistent with those from table 4.1 and table 4.2 on the fact that peer feedback was implemented in all of the four writing classes.
Table 4.4
Descriptive statistics of the time for correction
No. Questionnaire items Number of
respondents
Percentage 4 Does peer feedback take place during or after a
writing activity?
During
After
29 68
29.9%
70.1%
Figure 4.4. The time for correction
63
Regarding the exploration of the time when peer feedback took place, table 4.4 clearly shows that 68 out of 97 students agreed that peer feedback was organized after a writing activity, which accounting 10.1%. Meanwhile, the number of students who supposed that peer feedback occurred during a writing activity is 29, accounting lower rate of 29.9%. It can be seen that in writing classes with peer feedback implementation, the organization of peer correction takes place at various time depending much on the intension of teachers. It may be that in some classes, teachers organized peer feedback activities during while other teachers chose to conduct it after a writing activity. However, it is of no exception that teachers let peer feedback happen at both during and after writing tasks in their classes. Chart 4.4 specifically illustrates the descriptive statistic of what was presented.
Table 4.5
Descriptive statistics of teacher’s correction instruction
No. Questionnaire items Number of
respondents
Percentage 5 Does your teacher show you how to correct your
classmates’ mistakes?
Yes
No
95 2
97.9%
2.1 %
Figure 4.5. Teacher’s correction instruction
64
Table 4.5 and figure 4.5 show students’ agreement and disagreement on teachers’ instruction on how to correct peers’ mistakes in writing lessons. It is clear that the agreement represents the larger portion of 97.9%, whereas the disagreement is undoubtedly much smaller, standing at only 2.1%. Hence, it is undeniable that to conduct peer feedback activities, instructions on how to provide feedback for peers was given to students by their teachers.
Regarding qualitative data collected from the interviews, it can be seen that the data are consistent with those collected from the questionnaire. More specifically, in terms of data collected from the student interviews, it was revealed that students expressed clearer information about the activities that their teachers required them to do and what that had to do during peer feedback session.
One student said:
“In peer feedback practice, my teacher asked us to evaluate our peer’s writing based on her feedback checklists. The checklists consisted some certain criteria for assessing. Then ticked in the box to evaluate our peer’s work. If possible, gave our peers suggestions for improvement. Then edited before summiting the final version to her.” (S1)
Another student expressed:
“My teacher asked me to read my peer’s work carefully and then correct grammar mistakes, spelling, punctuation, etc. in my peer’s writing.” (S3)
Another response was:
“She (the teacher) asked us to work in pairs, then had a look at our peer’s composition and then identified the mistakes in terms of grammar, spelling, sentence structures, etc. after that discussed with them if they agreed those mistakes” (S10)
Regarding teacher interviews, when being asked what they required their students to do in peer feedback activities, their responses varies due to teaching method and objectives of lessons. However, it is revealed that peer feedback
65
practices were focused in their writing lessons. The following examples best illustrates what their requirements were.
One teacher said:
“To conduct peer correction activities, I required them to correct mistakes in their peer’s writing carefully and avoid arguing during the session. Besides, they were also require to be polite when giving feedback.” (T1)
Another teacher answered:
“I asked them to read their peer’s work carefully and then correct grammar mistakes, spelling, punctuation, etc. in their peer’s writing and then asked them to give their own suggestions if possible.” (T3)
Another teacher expressed:
“During peer feedback activity, I asked students to evaluate their peer’s writing based on my feedback checklists. Then tick in the box to evaluate their peer’s work. Then edit before summiting the final version to me.” (T4)