Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms will provide teachers with practical guidelines for making peer response effective in the classroom and will offer a theoretical grounding on the purposes and importance of peer review, or feedback, as it relates to current writing instruction pedagogy.
Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms will provide teachers with practical guidelines for making peer response effective in the classroom and will offer a theoretical grounding on the purposes and importance of peer review, or feedback, as it relates to current writing instruction pedagogy.
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Overview
Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms will provide teachers with practical guidelines for making peer response effective in the classroom and will offer a theoretical grounding on the purposes and importance of peer review, or feedback, as it relates to current writing instruction pedagogy.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472029747 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2013 |
| Series: | Michigan Series on Teaching Multilingual Writers |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms
By Jun Liu, Jette G. Hansen
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2002 University of MichiganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-08808-9
CHAPTER 1
Effects of Peer Response
What concerns both L2 writing teachers and students most about peer response activities is their effectiveness. This brings up a number of questions. What constitutes effective peer response in ESL/EFL composition classrooms? Are students motivated to engage in peer response activities? How do their perceptions toward peer response evolve or change as a result of their peer response experiences? What effects do peer response activities have on students' revisions? Are the effects temporary — in other words, product-oriented, in terms of yielding only revisions in the writer's next draft — or can long-lasting effects be shown on a student's writing development in the second language? Each of these questions will be addressed as we examine the effects of peer response.
Motivational Effects: Perceptions of Peer Response
One primary concern of teachers using peer response activities in their L2 writing classrooms is whether their students will be engaged in the activities and find peer response activities meaningful and valuable in their learning processes. As far as students are concerned, their perceptions toward peer response in L2 writing could be either negative, positive, or a combination of both, as a result of their prior experience with peer response or of their inexperience with peer response. While their positive experiences with peer response can lead to higher levels of engagement and productivity, their negative experiences or lack of interest in peer response can decrease their level of engagement and minimize their productivity. The questions we need to ask are:
• What do ESL/EFL students think about peer response activities in their composition classes?
• How do the ways they receive their peer feedback affect their perceptions toward peer response activities?
• When and how do we ask students for their perceptions toward peer response activities?
• What are some possible factors that affect ESL/EFL students' perceptions of peer response activities in their writing courses?
What do ESL/EFL students think about peer response activities in their composition classes?
The fact that ESL/EFL students at all levels have mixed feelings about the effects of peer response activities is not surprising. Their preferences largely depend on their experiences with peer response, in terms of group dynamics and task variation, and on the quality of comments they receive from their peers. In general, L2 writing students concur that peer response activities help them understand their own drafts better through critiquing others' papers and thus help them construct and revise their own drafts. As one study indicated (Mangelsdorf 1992), despite the fact that some college ESL students in L2 composition classes were unhappy with their peers' advice and doubted the ability of some peers to critique their papers, many students were positive about their peer response experiences, believing that peer response activities helped them revise the content of their drafts. Some undergraduate ESL students felt that both reading peers' papers and receiving feedback from peers were helpful, although a few students were troubled by the tone and quality of the peer feedback (Leki 1990). Students in low-level ESL classes at a community college also found peer response activities beneficial, believing that peer response activities helped them formulate topic sentences more clearly; add details to their paragraphs; discover their own most frequent errors; and learn new vocabulary, organizational patterns, and grammatical structures from each other (Hansen and Liu 2000). At the graduate level, some students viewed peer response activities as beneficial because (1) reading their own drafts to peers helped them see their papers more clearly and (2) reading others' papers helped them compare their writing with others and learn new ideas (Mendonça and Johnson 1994). Commonly cited concerns regarding peer response activities are mistrust of peers' feedback and fear of being ridiculed by one's peers due to one's limited English proficiency (Nelson and Carson 1998).
How do the ways students receive peer feedback affect their perceptions toward peer response activities?
It should be pointed out that students' perceptions of peer response activities are also affected by whether and when they receive their teacher's feedback or comments on their drafts. When students receive peer feedback at the same time as they receive their teacher's feedback, they tend to attend to the teacher's comments more carefully than their peers' comments for the obvious reason that it is the teacher who gives the grade. In comparing the preference for teacher feedback, peer feedback, or self-feedback, students prefer teacher feedback, then peer feedback, and finally self-feedback (Nelson and Carson 1998; Zhang 1995). However, the issue is not whether teacher feedback should be given while students receive peer feedback. Rather, it is when the teacher's feedback should be given so that peer feedback will still be considered as a necessary and important channel of feedback that students can benefit from. It is understood that whenever there is a conflict between teacher feedback and peer feedback, the students are likely to incorporate teacher feedback, and by their doing so, the role of peer feedback is diminished. Students tend to have negative attitudes toward such peer feedback. It is impractical for teachers to refrain from giving feedback, but it is important to manage the timing of teacher feedback so as to maximize the effects of peer feedback (see chap. 4 for a detailed account of the role of the teacher in peer response activities).
When and how do we ask students for their perceptions toward peer response activities?
Students' perceptions toward peer response could differ dramatically depending on when and how they are asked about peer response. If students have a limited amount of exposure to peer response, their perceptions could be more superficial. In addition, students' perceptions of peer response collected through one questionnaire or interview do not help us understand the context in which their perceptions of peer response are formed and the process through which they construct their perceptions. Perceptions of L2 students toward peer response will be less meaningful if we do not have a frame of reference to help us assess to what extent our students have formed or changed their perceptions toward peer response over a period of time and how their prior experiences, or lack of experience, with peer response are shaped by their new experiences.
Liu (1997) conducted a comparative study of ESL students' pre-and postconceptualizations of peer response in a postadmission university ESL composition program in the United States. By comparing 14 students' preconceptualizations with their postconceptualizations over three consecutive peer response activities across three major writing assignments during a 10-week quarter, Liu found that positive experiences with peer response emerged at several levels. The students thought not merely that they could benefit from peer response by discovering problems in their drafts (textual level) but that they could also expand their knowledge and develop their thinking (cognitive level) and communicate and make friends with peers (communicative level). The students' perceptions of peer response at these three levels are illustrated in the quotes from their reflections in table 2.
While the students' experiences with peer response activities were positive overall, they also expressed negative feelings about it. One concern was the cross-disciplinary gap in understanding and critiquing peers' papers (e.g., response to field-specific topics by a general audience), and the other was uncertainty in trusting and accepting peers' comments psychologically and linguistically. As is discussed in chapter 3, having students from different disciplines read each other's papers has both advantages and disadvantages. An obvious benefit is that the paper has to be written very clearly in order to be understood, and thus the author has to keep the general audience in mind when writing. The main drawback of having people from other disciplines critique the paper is the restriction in readers' being able to fully understand the content and the field-specific jargon. In sum, students from the same discipline can give ideas to the writer, but students from different disciplines can point out portions of the text that are unclear (Mendonça and Johnson 1994).
What are some possible factors that affect ESL/EFL students' perceptions of peer response activities in their writing courses?
Admittedly, students' perceptions of peer response can be affected by multiple factors, such as the linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds of the students, the proficiency levels of the students, the tasks, the genre, and the format/mode of reviewing.
In peer response, the group members' cultural backgrounds are salient with regard to how these activities are actualized and what consequences they will result in. In many ESL writing classes, teachers encounter students from various linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds. Due to such diversity, these students will sometimes approach peer response tasks differently, and they will also influence one another in the process of peer response. Although we cannot generalize about student behavior in making or receiving peers' comments, students from certain cultural backgrounds are likely to have preferences regarding level of participation, in terms of giving or receiving peers' comments. For example, in a study investigating Chinese- and Spanish-speaking students' perceptions of their interactions in peer response groups in an ESL composition class, it was found that both the Chinese-and the Spanish-speaking students preferred negative comments that identified problems in their drafts. However, although these students agreed on the criterion of change as a mark of effectiveness, the Chinese students depended more than the Spanish students on group consensus in their peer groups (Nelson and Carson 1998). In another study of perceptions of peer response activities among graduate ESL students in a post-admission program, it was found that a Chinese student's perception of peer response changed from negative to more positive as a result of thorough preparation to meet the challenge of another Chinese peer who raised a lot of questions on the paper being reviewed (Liu 1998). Therefore, we should be careful in examining the perceptual differences regarding peer response activities of students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Sometimes students' perceived level of language ability appears to contribute significantly to their receptivity of the peer-editing process (Amores 1997). It is reasonable to assume that when students feel they are somewhat better than their peers, they are likely to participate more in the peer response activities and in offering their comments on their peers' drafts but might be less enthusiastic in receiving their peers' comments on their own drafts. This leads to the issue of the role each student plays in the peer group and the perceived status of the differential role played by each participant in a given group. To make peer response activities work, maintaining the equality of student roles is very important (see chap. 3 for a detailed discussion of grouping in peer response).
In addition, students' perceptions of peer response are largely related to the tasks that are required in peer response activities. For instance, students might be asked to find the strengths and weaknesses of their peers' drafts or they might be requested to find the theme, depending on what type of paper they are writing. These peer response tasks, which are usually specified in peer response sheets, clearly indicate the focus of the students' response. Therefore, clear adherence to these tasks will affect students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the responses they receive.
Closely related to the tasks, the genre or type of paper is also important in forming students' perceptions of peer response. For instance, in responding to narrative essays, students' comments might have a different focus than if they are responding to argumentative essays. If the focus of comments is skewed (e.g., if a student is expecting comments on the plot of the story and all she receives are grammatical comments), the author of the draft might feel disappointed and thus develop negative feelings about peer response.
Another factor that could contribute to student perceptions of peer response is the format/mode of peer response. For instance, while some students may feel more comfortable receiving peer feedback through E-mail or in writing, others might prefer meeting the writer face-to-face in order to clarify not only what was written but also why it was written in a particular way. Some students might feel that they can respond to a draft more objectively if the author's name is kept confidential, while some might feel that it is more helpful if they know whose paper they are responding to. These factors all contribute to the perceptions students hold of peer response activities.
In summary, there is much evidence that peer response activities are generally welcomed by students and that their perceptions of such activities are positive overall because of the benefits they receive: multiple perspectives on their writing, input on clarifying ideas, learning how to keep audience in mind while writing, and the raising of their consciousness toward their own writing. However, peer comments are less effective if the teacher's comments are offered concurrently. Therefore, caution should be used and teacher comments timed in order to maximize the effects of peer response activities. There are several other factors we need to consider, such as the task required, the genre of the paper under consideration, and the format/mode of peer response, in assessing students' perceptions of peer response activities in L2 writing classes.
Short-Term Effects: The Effects of Peer Response on Revision
Aside from concerns about whether students will be engaged by and therefore motivated to complete peer response activities, many teachers also express concerns about whether peer-revision activities in fact help students write better papers. Teachers are often concerned about whether students have the linguistic, content-based, and rhetorical knowledge to enable them to give their peers constructive feedback on their drafts and whether the writers of the drafts will in turn modify their texts based on their peers' suggestions. Integral to the success of both of these facets of peer response is adequate instruction in how to properly respond to peers' writing, along with the teacher's availability to answer any linguistic or rhetorical questions that may arise as students negotiate the meaning of a text (see chap. 6). Our discussion here will focus on a number of common questions teachers and students have regarding the effects of peer response on revision.
Can students detect problems in their peers' texts and offer suggestions on how to correct them?
A main concern of both teachers and students is whether students are in fact able to detect problems in their peers' texts and offer suggestions for correcting them. While a number of researchers have concluded that this is a problematic task for many L2 writers (e.g., Leki 1990; Nelson and Murphy 1992, 1993), other researchers have found that students, especially those who have been trained in peer response, are quite capable of making useful suggestions about their peers' drafts (e.g., Berg 1999; Hansen 2001; Hansen and Liu 2000; Hedgcock and Lefkowitz 1992; Paulus 1999; Stanley 1992; Villamil and Guerrero 1998). Such trained students have been found to be able to give specific responses to their peers' writing and to advise, collaborate, and point out problems with contentand rhetoric (Berg 1999; Hansen 2001; Hansen and Liu 2000; Hedgcock and Lefkowitz 1992; Lockhart and Ng 1995; Mendonça and Johnson 1994; Stanley 1992; Villamil and Guerrero 1998). Analysis of the interaction in peer response groups has shown that students actively ask questions (both requests for information and comprehension checks); give and ask for explanations (of unclear points, opinion, content); restate; give suggestions; and correct grammar mistakes (Mendonça and Johnson 1994). In fact, peers may give better content feedback than teachers if the students are paired based on the same fields of study (Belcher 1990). In addition, peer response groups can be a fruitful environment for students to negotiate meaning and practice a wide range of language skills (Lockhart and Ng 1995), which are integral not only to their development as second language writers but also to the development of all four language skills — reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Peer Response in Second Language Writing Classrooms by Jun Liu, Jette G. Hansen. Copyright © 2002 University of Michigan. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
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