Khảo sát về tính hiệu quả của phương pháp sử dụng ý kiến phản hồi của bạn học tới việc phát triển kỹ năng viết tiếng anh đối với học sinh lớp 11 chuyên anh trường THPT sơn tây

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

******

CHU THỊ PHƯƠNG LINH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTTIVENESS OF PEER-WRITTEN
FEEDBACK ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESL WRITING FOR THE 11th
SPECIALIZED ENGLISH GRADE IN SONTAY HIGH SCHOOL
(Khảo sát về tính hiệu quả của phương pháp sử dụng ý kiến phản hồi của bạn
học tới việc phát triển kỹ năng viết Tiếng Anh đối với học sinh lớp 11 chuyên
Anh – Trường THPT Sơn Tây)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

Hanoi – 2015


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

******

CHU THỊ PHƯƠNG LINH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTTIVENESS OF PEER-WRITTEN
FEEDBACK ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESL WRITING FOR THE 11th
SPECIALIZED ENGLISH GRADE IN SONTAY HIGH SCHOOL
(Khảo sát về tính hiệu quả của phương pháp sử dụng ý kiến phản hồi của bạn
học tới việc phát triển kỹ năng viết Tiếng Anh đối với học sinh lớp 11 chuyên
Anh – Trường THPT Sơn Tây)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Do

Hanoi – 2015


DECLARATION
I confirm that the thesis “An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Peer-written
Feedback to the Development of ESL Writing for 11th Grade Majoring English in
Sontay High school” is a presentation of my original research work. It was carried
out under the consultant of Prof. Assoc. Dr. Nguyen Van Do.
I also declare that quotation for the information and references in the thesis has
obeyed academic rules.
I hereby want to confirm that this research had never been published anywhere
before the submission and this research is only carried out in the framework of a
master thesis.
Date: ……………………………………….
Signature: ………………………………….

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With boundless love and great attitude, I would like to send my deepest sincere and
appreciation to the people who devote their valuable work and time for the
researchers during the time conducting the research. Without their help, this
research would have never been completed
First of all, I would like to express my special thankfulness to my supervisor, Prof.
Assoc. Nguyen Van Do for the guidance, support, consistence advice as well as
remarks and engagements through the process of this master thesis. All of his help
contributes to bring the success to the research.
I would also like to send my appreciation to all the participants of this thesis. They
are Mrs. Nguyen Thu Huyen- the former teacher of 11th English gifted class in
Sontay high school, Mrs. Le Phuong Lan- the teacher of English and 45 students in
this class, who willingly shared their precious time and efforts to help me complete
the questionnaire and conduct a long series of writing test during four months of
collecting data. Without their support, the thesis would never been fulfilled.
I hope to send my thanks to my colleague, teachers and English teaching staffs in
Sontay high school for their valuable critical feedbacks, comments and
encouragements.
Last but not least, I am very grateful to my family and friends, who always stand by
me and give me mental support as well as encouragement to complete the master
thesis

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ABSTRACT
The study is designed to investigate the effect of peer written feedback on the
development of ESL writing skill for the 11th grade. The study primarily aims to

explore the attitude of 11th grade students majoring English towards peer written
feedback activity. This study also explores students‟ writing aspects which had been
improved thanks to the feedback from their peers The results of the research may be
proved to suggest some implications for the teacher to exploit more roles of peer
written feedback within ESL writing lesson.
Firstly, the sample including 45 students in 11th grade majoring English in Sontay
high school was required to do the proficiency tests to measure the level of
improvement students had thanks to the help of their peer-feedback. After that, half
of them were asked to attend the survey to give the data for the attitude of students
towards peer written feedback in their ESL writing. The collected data were then
presented under the form of tables and charts. The result showed that students had
mixed attitude towards peer-written feedback. However, the number of students
having positive attitude were out-numbered than those who has negative viewpoint
about it.
The main instrument to collect research data were students‟ writing tests measured
during the four-month testing. The change in the assessment and the number of
mistakes which could be realized and corrected indicated that peer written feedback
had improved the quality of students‟ writing products in some aspects.

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INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Feedback in education is seen to take a crucial contribution to the improvement of
students‟ ESL learning. It takes benefits in improving “both encouraging and
consolidating learning” (Anderson, 1992; Brophy, 1981, Vygotsky, 1978 cited in

Ken Hyland and Fiona Hyland, 2006). In most of the traditional ESL class,
especially writing section, giving feedback and correctness to students is one of the
important tasks of the teachers, as feedback takes benefits in creating supporting
learning environment, as well as instructing students a model sample of writing.
With the help of teacher, students have fewer burdens with their work.
However, the help of teacher‟s feedback in the proficiency of students‟ ESL writing
skill just has benefits in some aspects. The researchers found out that focusing on
the help of teacher only would be problematic as they just understand the „outer layout‟ of the problems without understanding the core reason of the errors and how to
make the writing improved. As a consequence, students will have short-term
improvement on their revised lesson and they will be easy to make the mistakes
again. Thus, one of the duties of teachers is to discover an effective way to facilitate
students‟ learning without the help of teacher‟s feedback and help them avoid the
above-mentioned troubles.
To prepare for students a good writing skill, teachers should try to combine
different strategies with the aim of helping students learn better and enhancing
writing skill because “Second language writers often benefit most and make most
progress when teachers contribute to this goal through a variety of intervention
strategies available in classroom settings” Skroll (2003). Among many
interventions, using students‟ peer feedback in writing is one of the effective
strategies. In this method, students conduct their first writing product. In the next
stage, they exchange it with their peer to receive their friend‟s feedback.

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Despite the effectiveness of written feedback to students‟ ESL writing skill, most
experienced English teachers in the school still blame the drawbacks of peer-written
feedback. The reason is that students‟ ability is inadequate to give useful feedbacks.
They have difficulty in indicating the errors and providing suggestions. Many
teachers do not take advantages of peer written feedback in their ESL writing period

as they do not truly believe it can bring benefits to their students. They assume that
peer written feedback just has its roles to the college or university students. This
rumor is an obstacle that prevents the students from receiving modern learning and
teaching techniques, and peer written feedback in specific.
Besides, the previous studies show too much conflict. The results of the studies
depend largely on the attitudes of students toward this kind of feedback, which
contributes to the success and effectiveness of peer written feedback. From the
above mentioned reasons, the research “The effect of peer written feedback on the
development of ESL writing for the 11th major English grade at Sontay high school”
is carried out
2. Aims of the study
This research is conducted with the aim of:
(1) Exploring students‟ attitudes towards the written peer feedback activity.
(2) Investigating the level of improvement students gained after the periods of
testing with peer written feedback method.
(3) Suggesting some specific implications for teachers to exploit further
effectiveness of peer –written feedback in writing lesson.
3. Research questions
In order to fulfill the aims, the research attempts to answer the following
questions:
1. What are the attitudes of students to peer-written feedback on their
writing?

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2. To what extents of students‟ ESL writing can have improvement thanks to
peer-written feedback?
3. What are the drawbacks of applying peer-written feedback in students‟
ESL writing lessons?

4. Scope of the study
Feedback applied in writing is such a broad topic, which includes teacher
feedback and students‟ feedback. Students‟ feedback in particular contains many
forms; however, within the framework of the study, the researcher hopes to focus
on the students of 11th grade majoring English in Sontay high school to provide
written form of feedback to their peers applied in writing skill.
5. Previous findings about the study
The large numbers of researches and journal published articles have been carried
out to evaluate the relationship between peer-written feedback and the
improvement of students‟ writing proficiency. All of these may use different
research methodology and concentrate on their specific aspects; however, all of
them try to explore the roles of peer written feedback on ESL teaching and
learning writing. In this thesis, the author recommends to summarize some
previous findings related to the study.
The first research to be mentioned here is the journal “Effects of Teacher and
Peer Feedback on Students’ Writing at Secondary Level”, which was conducted
by Ghani, Manuna, Asgher and Tahira. The research‟s purpose is to investigate
the effectiveness of peer written feedback and teacher feedback on the written
record of students and then examine the attitudes of them toward feedback
activity. In order to give the result for the research, the author carried out an
investigation in the five government secondary schools in Bahawalpur with the
population of 100 students. In order to collect the data, the researcher used
survey questionnaires, students‟ pre-test and post test and students‟ written
remarks about the whole experimental feedback from the sample. The final

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