Thái độ của học sinh lớp 11 trường THPT chuyên Bắc Kạn về ý kiến phản hồi của bạn học với bài viết tiếng Anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES




NGUYỄN THỊ VIỆT HÀ



THE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES
TOWARD PEER FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITINGS:
CASE OF 11 GRADERS IN BAC KAN GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL
(THÁI ĐỘ CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BẮC KẠN VỀ Ý
KIẾN PHẢN HỒI CỦA BẠN HỌC VỚI BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH CỦA CÁC EM


M.A MINOR THESIS




MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410



Hanoi-2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES




NGUYỄN THỊ VIỆT HÀ



THE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES
TOWARD PEER FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITINGS:
CASE OF 11 GRADERS IN BAC KAN GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL
(THÁI ĐỘ CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BẮC KẠN VỀ Ý
KIẾN PHẢN HỒI CỦA BẠN HỌC VỚI BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH CỦA CÁC EM


M.A MINOR THESIS




MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
SUPERVISOR: Ms. TRẦN HIỀN LAN

Hanoi-2012

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration………………………………………………………………
Acknowledgements …………………….………………………………
Table of contents……………………………………………………….
List of Tables and Figures ………… ………………………………….
Abstract …………………………………………………………………
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study …….…………………………………………
1.2. Aims of the study ……………………………………………….
1.3. Scope of the study……………………………………………….
1.4. Significance of the study………………………………………
1.5. Methods of the study……………………………………………
1.6. Design of the study…………………………………………
CHAPTER ONE. LITERATURE REVIEW.
2.1. Teaching writing in EFL classroom ……………………………….
2.1.1. Why learn to write…………………………………………….
2.1.2. Writing in EFL classroom……………………………………
2.2. Process writing approach…………………………………………
2.3. An overview of written peer feedback on writing………………….
2. 3.1 Definition of peer feedback and formats of peer feedback…….
2.3.2. Advantages of peer feedback…………………………………
2.3.3. Disadvantages of peer feedback………………………………
2.3.4. Student‟s attitude toward peer feedback………………………
CHAPTER TWO . METHODOLOGY
3.1. Context of the study…………………………………………….

3.1.1. The setting of the study……………………………………
3.1.2. The writing program ………………………………………….
3.2. Research questions…………………………………………
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3.3. Research design…………………………………………………
3.3.1. Peer feedback activity……………………………………….
3.2.2. Writing cycle………………………………………………
3.3. Participants………………………………………………………
3.4 Data collection instruments…………………………………………
3.5. Research procedure………………………………………………
3.6. Data analysis…… ………………………………………………
CHAPTER THREE. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Research question 1: What are the attitudes of 11 graders in Bac
Kan gifted High school toward written peer feedback?
4.2. Research questions 2: How much of the peer feedback was
included in the students‟ second draft of their writings?
4.3. Research question 3: To what extent did peer feedback lead to
improvement on the students‟ second draft of their writings?
CHAPTER FOUR. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
CONCLUSION
6.1. Summary of major findings………………………………………
6.2. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study………
6.3. Suggestions for further study……………………………………

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
List of Tables
Table 1: Number of mistakes recognized by peers on the first drafts and the number of
suggestions incorporated into the next writing………………………………………… 33
Table 2: The students‟ writing performance between the first and the second drafts…. 35

List of Figures

Figure 1: The writing process ( Seow)……………………… 8
Figure 2: The process wheel ( Harmer)…………………………………………………. 8
Figure 3: The design of peer feedback activity……………… 20
Figure 4: Student‟s writing performance between two drafts……………………………35
Figure 5: Mistakes corrected for improvement over mistakes pointed out………………36

















1

INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study
Feedback is widely seen in education as crucial for both encouraging and
consolidating learning (Anderson, 1982; Brophy, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978 cited in
Ken Hyland and Fiona Hyland, 2006). Providing feedback to students has been
recognized one of the most important tasks of writing teachers for feedback

power in helping to create a supporting teaching environment, in developing the
ways students talk about writing, in conveying and modelling ideas about good
writing. Yet, whether or not teachers‟ feedback is helpful to the students‟ writing
skills is not conclusive. In Hyland‟s study (1998, cited in Hyland, 2003), she
found that students followed the teacher‟s feedback to revise without real
understanding of why the text or the grammar was problematic. Consequently,
students just made a short-term improvement on their revised versions. In other
words, feedback seems to contribute little to the long-term development of
students‟ writing. Worst of all, if a student‟s composition is full of errors marked
in red, he may be frustrated and his interest and confidence in leaning may be
reduced. Thus, it is necessary for teachers to explore effective ways to facilitate
students‟ learning from teachers‟ feedback, and meanwhile help them be able to
avoid the above-mentioned troubles.
In addition, in the writing instruction of EFL classes, feedback on
students‟ composition is always something teachers feel troublesome. It is a
heavy workload due to the large number of the students each teacher has to be in
charge of. In Viet Nam, the number of students in each class is often about thirty
to forty. In other words, the large class size causes little possibility for a teacher
to respond to students‟ multiple drafts of their writing. To deal with the problem
of large classes, peer feedback is recommended as a solution. Peer feedback is a
useful alternative way to reduce teacher‟s time on giving feedback, to provide
students different source of reader response. (Berg, 1999; Caulk,1994; Min
2

2006) and to cultivate independent critical readers and writers, to enhance
confidence, creativity of students, to improve students‟ writing skills ( Ting &
Qian, 2010; Mohammed Farrah, 2012). According to the result of Zheng‟s study
(2007), students can correct most of the errors quite well.
Although a variety of beneficial effects of peer feedback on L2 writings
have been proved, there are some criticisms of peer feedback used in L2 and FL.

Fei Hong (2006) finds that response of the students is not at a level sufficient to
improve the quality of writing. Students incorporate much higher percentage of
teacher feed back than peer feedback because they have more confidence in the
teacher (Tsui and Ng‟, 2000).
The earlier studies show conflicting findings. The results of studies
depend partly on students‟ attitude toward peer feedback, which is a crucial
factor affecting the effectiveness of peer feedback. Although many studies on
peer feedback have been conducted in the world, „what our students think of it‟
remains a common concern.
For all the above mentioned reasons, I, in this study, wish to investigate
the attitude of 11 graders in Bac Kan gifted high school toward peer feedback.
1.2. Aims of the study .
This research is conducted to investigate students‟ attitudes toward the
written peer feedback; the rate of students incorporating peer feedback into their
revisions and improvement of their writings resulting from peer feedback.
1.3. Scope of the study.
The study is limited to the investigation of the attitude of a small group of
11-grade students at Bac Kan gifted high school towards peer feedback in
writing as well as the extent to which peer feedback helps the students to
improve their writing. It is, thus, just a small-scale survey and no generalization
of the findings is intended.

3

1.4 Significance of the study
The research is carried out with the hope that the results of the study will
provide significant insights into written peer feedback and how the students react
to these responses. In addition, with the findings in the study, I hope to answer to
the question whether or not peer feedback is a useful alternative way to reduce
teacher‟s burden of correcting students‟ writings. This may lead to suggestions

for improving quality of peer feedback and helping the writing teacher
implement peer feedback practice more successfully
1.5. Methods of the study.
Case study was implemented to research. Moreover, to realize the aims,
the following methods for data collection were employed in the study.
+ Observation in class setting. Data is recorded by note taking.
+ Interviews with a list of specific and open ended questions between the
students and me.
+ Collecting existing information which are students‟ written drafts 1 with
peer feedback and drafts 2 with revision.
1.6. Design of the study
This study has three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion
The first part briefly states the introduction to the subject and an overview of the
paper including the rationale of the study, the aims, research questions, scope,
methods, the significance and the design of the study.
The part development are divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 provides a
review of relevant literature including an overview of writing teaching, of
process writing approach, of written peer feedback on the writing which can
serve as the background for the whole research. Chapter 2 contains the
methodology of the study including participants, research procedures of data
collection and data analysis. Chapter 3 presents and analyzes the collected data
from observations, interviews and the students‟ written drafts as well as the
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discussion based on the findings. Chapter 4 offers some implications for better
practice of peer written feedback on student‟s writings at Bac Kan gifted high
school. Lastly, conclusion summarizes some main issues mentioned in the
research, offers the limitation of the study and suggestions for further research.
Following the chapters are the references and appendices.
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CHAPTER ONE. LITERATURE REVIEW.
2.1. Teaching writing in EFL classroom
2.1.1. Why learn to write
Literacy, which refers to ability to read and write, is a desirable skill for
whole population. In industrialized societies, education as well as literacy gives
literate people a huge advantage over illiterate ones. Although when growing up,
all human beings learn to speak first and writing later. Writing is an integral skill
and need to be taught. That is because “spoken language can be acquired
naturally as a result of being exposed to it, whereas the ability to write has to be
consciously learned” (Jeremy Harmer. p3). In context of education particularly
in the examinations, candidates‟ knowledge is measured through their writing
proficiency. Therefore, those with a good writing ability will have more
advantages. When learning a foreign language, people learn to communicate
with others. Yet face to face interaction in which communicators can listen to
talks, look at facial expression and gestures does not always convey all what the
communicators mean. Even in some cases when face to face communication
takes place, communicators can not understand each other because of bad
pronunciation or strange accents, writing is an effective means of
communication. That is another reason why people have to write. Moreover, in
EFL classes, writing helps students learn reinforce grammatical structures,
vocabulary, idioms which have been taught by their teacher; express ideas in
newly taught language logically and acceptably in written English discourse;
force the brain to work. Being able to write is difficult not only for foreign
learners but for native speakers as well because writing has been described as a
complicated cognitive task. It is more than a direct production of what the brain
knows, it demands careful thought, discipline and concentration. Training
students to write is a challenging task and demands the care and attention of
language teachers.
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2.1.2. Writing in EFL classroom.
Learning to write in English as second or a foreign language can be quite
different from writing English as a native language and in many occasions even
it is problematic. According to one study by John (1997), he found that many
non- native students were reportedly producing vague and confusing,
rhetorically unstructured, and overly-personal written texts. Ferris (2002)
discovered that L2 students are particularly concerned about their surface-level
errors rather than more global issues such as logic, rhetoric and ideas because L2
writers are constantly aware of their linguistic limitations. And Hinkel (2004)
mentions that their writing lacks basic sentence-level features such as the proper
use of hedging, modal verbs, pronouns, active and passive voice. Therefore,
Ferris (2002) describes giving grammar feedback to such students as
„indispensable‟. Hyland and Hyland (2001) take a similar stance to Ferris, as
they argue that providing written feedback to language students is one of the
ESL writing teacher‟s most important practices. Lee (1997) claims that ESL
students crave surface-level correction, and believe in its effectiveness. ESL/
EFL students want, appreciate, and apply the corrections they get from their
teachers (Hyland & Hyland, 2001; Hyland, 1998). They are still struggling with
their lower-language proficiency, and concerns regarding linguistic errors
2.2. Process writing approach
The main reason for including this section is that the links between peer
feedback and process approach are obvious. Berg (1999), Zhang (1995) and Keh
(1990) believe that peer response is actually part of the process approach to
teaching writing and feedback in its various forms is a fundamental element of
this approach
Process approach has generally been regarded as a reaction against
product-based approaches, where the focus shifts from the final product to the
underlying processes of writing that enable writers to produce written texts. As
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Seow (2003) defines, process writing is comprised of four stages: planning,
drafting, revising and editing. Similarly, J. Harmer (2007) suggests that this
process has four main elements: planning, drafting, editing (including reflecting
and revising) and final version.
+ Planning (pre- writing): is any activity in the classroom that
encourages students to write. In this stage, students generate tentative ideas and
gather information for writing.
+ Drafting: At this stage, the writers focus on the fluency of writing and
are not preoccupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the draft.
+ Responding (Reflecting): The readers play a central role in the
successful implementation of process writing by giving response. The readers
will help writer rediscover meanings and facilitate the revision of initial drafts.
+ Revising: The writers review their texts on the basis of the feedback
given in the responding stage. They reexamine what has been written to see how
effectively they have communicated their meanings to the readers, to improve
global content and the organization of ideas.
+ Editing: The writers are engaged in tidying up the texts in term of
grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and accuracy of supportive
textual material such as quotation, examples as they prepare the final version for
evaluation by the teacher.
Both Seow and Harmer have the same ideas that the stages is in a
recursive and non linear sequence. The many directions that writers can take can
be shown by the following plan of the writing process (Seow: 315) or the
process wheel (Harmer: 6)
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Figure 1: The writing process (Seow)

Figure 2: The process wheel (Harmer)


Hyland (2003) also indicates that the stages might occur interactively and
simultaneously. In other words, all the works of planning and drafting can be
responded and revised even when the final versions have not been completed.
PLANNING

DRAFTING
EDITING
FINAL VERSION ?
FINAL VERSION
PROCESS ACTIVED
PLANNING
DRAFTING
REVISING
EDITING
PROCESS TERMINATED
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With regard to feedback techniques, it is important to highlight the
relationship between process writing and feedback in general, and peer feedback
in particular, as this approach enables and even encourages students to work
collaboratively in groups (Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Badger & White, 2000). Liu
and Hansen (2002) similarly recognize the relationship between feedback and
writing process , and they assume that the former supports the latter, especially
during the drafting and revision stages, and hence writing process enables
students to get multiple feedback opportunities (e.g. from teacher, peer and self)
across various drafts. This fact should certainly help to improve students‟
following drafts in accuracy, content enrichment and text organization. Cohen

(1990) further explains that the writing process in this approach usually passes
through several rounds of peer editing and self-assessment before it reaches the
teacher for final assessment, making this approach a favorable one when training
students to use peer feedback.
2.3. An overview of written peer feedback on writing
The use of peer feedback activities in ESL and L2 writing classes have
generally supported as a potentially valuable aid for its social, cognitive,
affective, and methodological benefits (Rollinson, 2004). As the main focus of
this research, peer feedback will be discussed in this section.
2. 3.1. Definition of peer feedback and formats of peer feedback
Peer feedback is referred to by many names, for example, peer
response, peer review, peer editing, peer critiquing, and peer evaluation.
According to Liu & Hansen (2002: 1) peer respond is „use of learners as sources
of information and interactants for each other in such a way that learners assume
roles and responsibilities normally taken on by a formally trained teacher, tutor,
or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other‟s drafts in both written and
oral formats in the process of writing‟. Another definition is given by Rollinson
(2005) in which he considers peer feedback an educational arrangement, in
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which students comment on their fellow students‟ work for formative or
summative purposes.
Peer feedback takes many forms and serves many purposes. It has already
been mentioned that it can be employed in the form of conferencing, in the form
of written as well as oral comments, or both simultaneously. This „flexibility‟ is
another useful aspect of peer feedback (Rollinson, 2005). Peer feedback can also
take many formats, some of the most common ones being: 1) to assign groups of
two, three, or four students and ask them to exchange their first drafts and give
comments on each others‟ drafts before making final versions; 2) to make
students read their own essays aloud, or get a colleague to read it instead, while

the other students listen and provide feedback, either written or oral, on the work
that they have just heard; 3) is not to restrict feedback to the time after students
have written their essays, because it is possible for students to use this type of
feedback in the pre-writing stage by asking other students to comment on each
others‟ outlines, or to carry out a brainstorming session (Hyland, 2003).
2.3.2. Advantages of peer feedback
“Peer feedback was said to provide a means of both improving writer‟s
drafts and developing reader‟ understanding of good writing”(Hyland, 2003,
p.108). According to the result of one research by Topping (1998), peer learning
and assessment help students develop communication skills, the ability to
collaborate, critical thinking, and habits of life-long learning. Furthermore, the
peer feedback also shows acceptable levels of validity and reliability. A Case
Study of Peer Feedback in a Chinese EFL Writing Classroom was conducted by
Ting & Qian to investigate to what extent the students incorporated peers
feedback into revisions and whether their writing improved. The result shows
that the participants incorporated a large part of peer feedback into their
revisions, which led to slight improvement in fluency, significant improvement
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in accuracy. In addition, students could become more critical readers and
revisers through reading others writings critically.
Another study to examine the impact of trained responders‟ feedback on
EFL college students‟ revisions, both in terms of revision types and quality
conducted by Min (2006) also provides a similar result. Results show that
students incorporated a significantly higher number of reviewers‟ comments into
revisions post peer review training and trained peer review feedback can
positively impact EFL students‟ revision types and quality of texts directly
Paul Rollinson (2005) points out many reasons why to use peer feedback in the
ESL writing classroom such as usefulness, specification of peer feedback,
effective revision on the basis of the comment from the peer readers. In addition,

he also approves use of peer feedback because it helps the students become
critical readers and enhances collaboration as well as communication between
student reader and students writer
Orsmond et al. (2000, cited in Liu & Carless, 2006) argue that peer
involvement in assessment, conducted in a non-threatening, collaborative
atmosphere, enables students to learn better because it prompts them to think
more critically. Liu & David Carless (2006) finds out evidence from the research
by Falchikov (2001) that peer feedback enhances student learning as students are
actively engaged in articulating evolving understandings of subject matter.
Calkin (1986, 10) adds that peer feedback can create “a learning community in
the classroom and everyone in it must be both a teacher and a student”.
Moreover, peer feedback can also help to establish a social context for writing.
The student writers have sense that they are writing to a „real‟ audience rather
than to the teacher.
In sum, the results of many previous researches express the positive
attitude of students toward peer feedback. It gives benefits to not only the
student writers but the student readers as well.
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2.3.3. Disadvantages of peer feedback.
Many researchers, for example Rollinson (2005), Hy land (2000) also
believe that ESL students will always question the purposes and advantages of
this technique which is particularly true with students who are accustomed to
teacher-fronted classroom. The main criticism is that they instinctively feel that a
better writer such as their teacher is the one who is qualified to provide them
with useful comments. They do not believe that their peers can help them since
they do not have confidence in their peers‟ abilities. Thus, they do not want their
friends to give feedback or correct their paper. They prefer the feedback and
correction only from their teachers. They see the peer feedback as a useless
activity and a waste of their time. Therefore, they might ignore or do not want to

join in any activities. Even worse, they might do it because teachers ask them to,
but they probably would never really pay attention to giving or reading their peer
feedback. Linda B. Nilson adds that students fail to put adequate effort and care
into analyzing each other‟s work and giving constructive, detailed feedback.
Rollinson(2005) adds that it may be impossible to use peer feedback in
classroom because of the time constraints. The allowed time for each lesson is
not enough for student to cover many procedures as well as a series of social and
interactional skills, such as arriving at a consensus, debating, questioning,
asserting, defending, evaluating the logic and coherence of ideas, and expressing
criticisms and suggestions in a clear, comprehensible, yet tactful way.
Additionally, students may not be confident in their own abilities. In some cases,
if they have to read a paper from a classmate who they know has higher English
proficiency than they do, they are reluctant to give any negative feedback.
Instead, they may only give short and general feedback such as “good” or “very
interesting story.” Their peers will not be able to learn anything from such
simple feedback. As a result, the peer feedback may be just a time-wasting
activity that makes students feel uncomfortable.
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Besides, peer feedback is sometimes ineffective due to maintaining group
harmony, withholding critical comments or reluctance to claim a degree of
authority (Carson and Nelsons,1996, cited in Rollinson, 2005). This is true for
Asian students such as Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese students. As a result,
there is no question that they would feel uncomfortable to freely give feedback
to their classmate. They would fear that their feedback might break the harmony
of the group relationship because it may hurt their peers‟ feeling. It may make
their peer embarrassed and angry with them. Hence, they hesitate or avoid giving
negative feedback even though they know that the feedback is useful to their
peers. They will choose to give only positive feedback. Consequently, their peers
will miss an opportunity to know their own problems and benefit from their

feedback.
2.3.4. Student’s attitude toward peer feedback.
A few studies have explored the student‟s attitude toward peer feedback.
These studies, however, produced different results.Nooreiny Maarof, Hamidah
Yamat and Kee Li Li conducted a study of 150 Malaysian students from five
secondary schools to investigate ESL students‟ perception of the role of teacher,
peer and combined teacher-peer feedback in ESL writing. The result showed that
most of the students thought that their peers do not point out or correct all
mistakes when giving written feedback compared to their teachers. They also
believed that their peers only provided general comments on their essays.
Asifa Sultana (2009), citing a study conducted by Sima Sengupta (1998),
shows that out of 12 students, not one of them revised their written work from
their peers‟ feedback. The students mentioned 18 times that they were
„embarrassed to have peers read the composition‟. Even one student in that study
opposed peer feedback activity because he did not want his classmate to see his
writing for the reason that he did not have confidence in his own writing
proficiency. He said “I think organization is better if teacher tells me what to do.
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I think I do not like my neighbour to read my composition. I have many mistakes.
I am not… I do not like… my class friend.
The result in a study by Fei Hong (2006) also challenges some beliefs
about the affective and pedagogical advantages of peer response. The data
collected over one semester through observations, interviews and questionnaires
revealed that participants have very negative reactions to peer response. When
asked to read and give feedback on the writing, the students looked carelessly
through each other essays, made few comments and ten minutes later started to
talk about unrelated issues. Thus, among the above mentioned studies, peer
feedback seems not to be preferred and not effective in ESL and EFL writing
class. In addition, to find out the reason why peer feedback failed in writing

class, Min (2005) interviewed university students in Taiwan and identified that
the lack of peer‟s concrete suggestion and writer‟s strong sense of the ownership
of their own writings were the primary reason for failure of peer review activity
according to student‟s view. Another research conducted by Hongwei Ren in
order to find out students‟ attitudes towards various sources of feedback for their
English writing revealed that more than a third of the participants preferred to
have teacher feedback only, 60.3% of the students preferred to have both teacher
and peer feedback, Furthermore, great majority of them described teachers as
experienced experts and teacher feedback as being authoritative and effective,
whereas they found peer feedback useful only in addressing surface language
corrections or offering an alternative perspective. Such students‟ unfavourable
attitudes toward peer feedback were attributed to limitations of students as
reviewers and writers, cultural influences and inappropriate implementation of
peer review
However, some other studies revealed the students‟ positive attitude
toward peer feedback. Minh Hien conducted a study on seventy five university
students in Can Tho University who were divided into two groups: control group
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using traditional teacher feedback on the written products and experimental
group using peer feedback in an online environment. The result of the study
shows that most of the students (88.6%) prefer peer feedback to traditional
teacher feedback. Moreover, the study also demonstrate a significant
improvement in the quality of the students‟ written texts after incorporating peer
feed back into the revision. I explain improvement in the quality of the students‟
writing in term of the effective and constructive feedback and critical comments.
Another study conducted Mohammed Farrah (2012) to investigate students‟
attitudes towards peer feedback in process writing classes in addition to
assessing the effectiveness of this teaching technique also provides a similar
result. The sample of the study consisted of 105 male and female students from

five sections of an undergraduate writing course offered by the English
Department at Hebron University in the academic year 2010/2011. A pre-test,
post-test as well as a pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire consisting of
twenty statements follow a five-point Likert scale. The results indicated that
students viewed peer feedback as a worthwhile experience; it offered an
opportunity for social interaction. It also improved students‟ writing skills.
Furthermore, the technique enhanced students‟ critical thinking, confidence,
creativity, and motivation. In addition, it helped in improving their assignments.
Additionally, Chuang‟s study explored 60 Taiwan university students‟
perception of peer review activity. All students received careful planned peer
review training and experienced four peer review sessions. She found that peer
review activity was considered as facilitating interesting and favorable by most
participants.
Peer feedback as well as other types of feedback receives different points
of views from different subjects, however, the importance of effective peer
response should be admitted. This was what Hyland and Hyland (2006) said”
effective peer response was the key element of helping novice writer to
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understand how readers see their work” To use peer feedback successfully, the
responsibility belongs to the teacher to help and prepare students to be ready for
this challenging technique.
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CHAPTER TWO. METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study is to investigate the students‟ attitudes toward
peer feedback as well as explore the effect of peer feedback on students‟ English
writings. This chapter begins with some information about the context of the
study. This is followed by a presentation of the research questions. Then,
information about the research design, research participants, and research

procedures will be provided. The following is the instrumentation, the fifth
section will focus on procedure and the last is data analysis.
3.2. Context of the study
3.1.1. The setting of the study
The study was carried out in Bac Kan gifted high school. There are about
three hundred students studying at school each year. The total classes are eleven
and not very large- sized ones (about 30 – 35 students in each) divided into
different majors such as English, Mathematics, Literature, Chemistry and
Physics. There are thirty-eight teachers and most of them are well-trained. They
are considered the most hard-working and enthusiastic teachers of all in the
province. There are four teachers of the English Group at the school.
Most of the students are ethnic minorities groups. They are hard-working
and well-behaved students. However, most of them have low ability in learning.
Many of them have low English proficiency. As a result, they often have a great
anxiety in English classrooms. Among different skilled lessons of English, they
find writing lesson less interesting than others and often participate in them
unsuccessfully.
3.1.2. The writing program
The textbooks which are required to teach English for non- major English
students in high schools are English Basic 10, 11 and 12. They were developed
based on the new national curriculum. The methodologies that the books follow
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are “learner-centered approach and the communicative approach with task-based
teaching being the central teaching method” (English 10, Teacher‟s Manual: 12).
Each book includes 16 teaching units and six review units. Each teaching
unit covers a topic and is sub-divided into five sections: Reading, Speaking,
Listening, Writing and Language Focus. Each part is supposed to be taught in a
period of 45 minutes. However, according to the recent teaching direction of
Education Ministry, the teacher can adjust the distribution flexibly to focus on

what need improving more. Therefore, to improve 11 grade students‟ writing
ability I spend more time on writing lessons.
The Writing section may begin with a model, followed by activities that
guide students through the writing process such as model analysis, language
work, and guided writing. In this part, students are required to produce various
text types such as personal and formal letters, narratives, chart, graph and table
description, and expository essays.
The ready made materials in text book lead students to engage in imitating
copying and transforming models of correct language texts to the new writing
task. There seems to be no explicit emphasis on the process of planning,
drafting, revision, and editing.
Moreover, the textbooks do not offer much chance for free writing
practice. This is quite far from the given goal of teaching writing in CLT that is
to enable learners to become more independent and effective writers. As a
result, the teachers have to adapt writing tasks to explore the students‟ creativity.
3.2. Research questions.
To investigate the students‟ attitudes toward peer feedback on their
writings at Bac Kan gifted high school, I attempted to find out the answers for
the following questions
1/What are the attitudes of 11 graders in Bac Kan gifted High school
toward written peer feedback?
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2/ How much of the peer feedback was included in the students‟ second
draft of their writings?
3/ To what extent did peer feedback lead to improvement on the students‟
second draft of their writings?
3.3 Research design
3.3.1. Peer feedback activity
Since all participants had not received any formal training of peer

feedback activity. I guided the participants briefly what they had to do to give
feedback on their peers‟ writings. And I also demonstrated some examples about
how to proceed with peer feedback activity in the first lesson of the writing class.
Due to the limited time in writing class, the detailed instruction can not be given.
The first step of peer feedback activity was to find a reviewer. I handed out the
first drafts randomly among participants. This random selecting partner aimed to
have different readers give commentaries on the first drafts after each time to
write. Then I gave them their peers‟ drafts and they read carefully. The third step
was that the reviewers had to underline the mistakes in the peer‟s draft and give
suggestion to correct those mistakes or provide commentaries to the writer.
Finally, the writers could revise their first drafts with the written suggestion and
commentaries given on the margin of the first draft from the peer feedback
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Figure 3: The design of peer feedback activity

3.2.2. Writing cycle
This study was to explore the students‟ attitude toward peer feedback and
the effect of peer feedback activity on the students‟ writings. In this study, the
participants were introduced to use process approach in writing task. Each
writing cycle was completed in two writing lessons lasting three weeks. It was
composed of whole – class brainstorming session, students‟ writing the first
draft, peer feedback activity, student‟s rewriting the second drafts, teacher‟s
comment on quality of peer feedback as well as students‟ writings and giving
mark. In the first lesson, the teacher held a brainstorming session for the students

to elicit ideas about the topic and guided students how to write the topic. Then
Finding a reviewer
Reading the peer‟s first draft
Giving written feedback
Revising the first draft