Người học chữa bài cho người học trong phát triển kỹ năng viết nhận thức của giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên tiếng Anh tại trường Đại học Kinh d

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
University of LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL studies
FACULTY of postgraduate studies

Trịnh Thị Thanh Xuân

PEER- FEEDBACK IN IMPROVING WRITING SKILLS:
PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND SECOND-YEAR NONENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF
BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

Ng-ời học chữa bài cho ng-ời học trong phát triển kỹ năng viết: Nhận
thức của giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên tiếng Anh tại
tr-ờng Đại học Kinh Doanh và Công Nghệ Hà Nội
MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
Course: K16
SUPERVISOR: Vị THóY QNH, M.A.

HANOI - 2010


iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement

i

Abstract

ii

Declaration

iii

Lists of tables, figures and appendices

iv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. The rationale of the study

1

1.2. Aims of the study and research questions

2

1.3. Scope of the study

2

1.4. Significance of the study

3

1.5. Methods of the study

3

1.6. Organization of the thesis

3

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

2.5. Summary

14

CHAPTER 3: THE METHODOLOGY
3.1. The current situation of teaching and learning writing at HUBT

15

3.2. The participants

15

3.3. Instruments

16

3.4. Data collection procedure

18

3.5. Data analysis procedure

19

3.6. Summary

19

CHAPTER 4: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Teachers’ perception on students’ written feedback

20

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

21


v
4.1.2. Teachers’ perception on the disadvantage of students’
written feedback
4.2. Students’ perception on peer written feedback

22
24

4.2.1. Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the
mistakes in their peers’ writing

25

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
of peer written feedback

34

4.2.4. Students’ perception on the disadvantage
of students’ written feedback
4.3. Improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback

36
37

4.4. Implications of using peer written feedback in improving
teaching and learning writing skill
4.5. Summary

40
41

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
5.1. Summary

42

5.2. Limitations of the study

43

5.3. Suggestions for further studies

43

References
Appendices


vi

LISTS OF TABLES
Table 1: Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes
in their peers’ writings

25

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
receiving peer written feedback

39

Table 4: Students’ improvement in grammar after receiving peer
written feedback

40

Table 5: Students’ improvement in vocabulary after receiving
peer written feedback

41

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

LISTS OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire

I

Appendix 2: Checklists

V

Appendix 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes

VI


1

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.


2

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 “Peerfeedback 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.


3

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.


4

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.


5

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.


6

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


7

“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 twoway 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


8

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
learning of writing

Although peer feedback has been supported by several theoretical frameworks, including
process writing, collaborative learning theory many teachers and students still have doubts on
it. Therefore, the next part is devoted to the advantages and disadvantages of doing peer
written feedback.

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.


9

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 twoway 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.


10

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.


11

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


12

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 wellplanned 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


13

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


14

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.


15

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


16

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.


17

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

Aspects

Criteria

Answer
(Yes/No)

1.Paragraph organization

+Grammatically correct

a. Topic sentence:

+ convey the controlling idea
+ too general or too specific

b. Supporting ideas1: (1)

+ supporting the controlling

Supporting ideas 2: (2)

(2)

(3)

ideas

Supporting ideas 3: (3)

(1)

+ relevant to the topic
+ the ideas are in logical
order

c. Concluding sentence

d. Coherence:
2. Grammar

+ summarize the paragraph
+ relevant to the topic of the
paragraph
+ proper transitional signals
Indicating the mistakes
Yes

No

Providing suggestions
for the mistakes
Yes
No

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
Yes

No

a. Word order
b. Word choice
c. Word form
4. General comments

useful

Providing suggestions
for the mistakes
Yes
No


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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.


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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.


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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.


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4.1.1. Teachers’ perception on the advantage of students’ written feedback
Percentage
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
A

B

C

D

E

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