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

DƯƠNG THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO USING PEER FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE
STUDENTS’ WRITING

SỬ DỤNG PHẢN ĐỒNG ĐẲNG ĐỂ NÂNG CAO
KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH M.A. MINOR THESIS
HANOI - 2012
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Declaration ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
Lists of tables, figures and appendices vi
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. The rationale of the study 1
2. Scope of the study 2
3. Aims of the study and research questions 2
4. Significance of the study 3
5. Methods of the study 3
6. Design of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Theoretical backgrounds of feedback in students‟ writing 5
1.1.1. Definitions of feedback. 5
1.1.2. Roles of feedback 5
1.1.3. Types of feedback 6
1.1.3.1. Teacher‟s feedback 6
1.1.3.2. Self-editing 7
1.1.3.3. Peer feedback 8
1.2. Previous studies on peer feedback and students‟ writing 10
Chapter 2: THE STUDY
2.1. Learning situation in writing class 13
2.2. Methodology 14
2.2.1. The participants 14

v

2.2.2. Instrumentation 15
2.2.3. Data collection procedure 15

Table 1: Students’ feedback given by peers.
Table 2: Examples of students’ giving peer feedback in sentence writing.
Table 3: Students’ improvement in the use of articles and punctuation after
receiving peer written feedback
Table 4: Students’ improvement in prepositions and word order after
receiving peer written feedback
Table 5: The students’ levels of difficulty in indicating the mistakes.
Table 6: The students’ levels of difficulty in providing suggestions for the
mistakes.

List of figures
Figure 1: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes
with the use of articles.
Figure 2: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes
with punctuation.
Figure 3: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for mistakes
related to prepositions.

List of appendices

Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Appendix 2: Criteria used to analyze the peer feedback on writing.
Appendix 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes
1

PART A: INTRODUCTION


teachers. Besides that, each teacher at HPCC has responsibility to work with
at least 4 classes each term and there are about at least 40 to 80 students in
each class. A large amount of feedback from teachers is required. Therefore,
to help teacher to decrease the overloaded work of marking students‟ papers
and to make the process more effectively, one of the most effective ways of
giving feedback on writing - peer feedback in sentence writing- was
introduced. And this study was carried out during the first term of 2011-2012
school year and the textbook is New Cutting Egde - Elementary (
Cunningham, Moor and Eales, 2005) with the first year students learning
English at elementary level at HPCC who graduated from High School with
English level of 7 years.

2. Scope of the study
Feedback in writing is such a broad topic including teacher‟s feedback
and peer feedback. However, it is not my intention to cover both of them
because of the time and the length of the study, only peer feedback in
sentence writing skills among first year students learning English at
elementary level in the first semester at Hai Phong Community College.

3. Aims of the study and research questions.
The study is designed to investigate how peer feedback can be applied
to improve students‟ writing.
In order to achieve this aim, the study attempts to answer the following
questions:
1. How do students respond to their peers‟ writings?

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2. How do students improve their writings after receiving peer feedback?
3. What are students‟ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to

Second, the survey was done on the 42 students who had given peer
written feedback to find out the students‟ perceived difficulties in responding
to their peers‟ writing.

6. Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion. The first part – Introduction gives reasons for choosing the topic,
the aims, the methods of the study and the significance of the study. It also
narrows the scope of the study and briefly presents an overall out-line of the
research study.
The second part - Development is sub-divided into three chapters.
Chapter 1 is Literature review, in which the related literature is reviewed.
Chapter 2 - The study - describes in detail the research methodology
which comprises the information of the learning situation, the participants,
instrumentation, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure.
Chapter 3 - Results and Discussion - presents the analysis and discussion
of the data and then draws the implications for the teaching and learning of
writing using peer written feedback.
The last part - Conclusion - offers some suggestions, limitations and
conclusion for the teaching and learning of writing using peer feedback.
5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

information for both teachers and students. It gives teachers information about
individual and collective class progress and, indirectly, is a form of evaluation
on their own teaching. For students, feedback is an ongoing form of
assessment which is more focused than marks or grades. In addition, feedback
provides students with advice about learning. That means not only
descriptions of students‟ language use are provided simply but also comments
can be made on students‟ learning processes. Moreover, feedback provides
students with language input. Through feedback, students can learn new
vocabulary and structures. Besides, feedback is also a form of motivation
when it encourages students to study and to use language to the best of their
ability by taking into account whatever teachers know about students‟
attitudes. Finally, feedback can lead students towards autonomy by leading
students to the point where they can find their own mistakes.

1.1.3. Types of feedback
A review on the literature on writing reveals three major areas of
feedback as revision. These areas are: teacher‟s feedback, self-editing and
peer feedback.

1.1.3.1. Teacher’s feedback
Teachers, traditionally, are the main source of feedback both on oral
and written language. And teacher‟s feedback can be seen as feedback given
by teachers. Teachers are the ones who also bring “expertise in judgment”
from experience on similar tasks, giving them insight into various ways to

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solve the assignments and in the difficulties previous learners encountered
(Topping, 2003).
Teacher‟s feedback plays a very important role in enhancing students‟


1.1.3.3. Peer feedback
As mentioned above, peer feedback is considered to be a hotly debated
topic. And the term “peer feedback” is differently defined by various
researchers, such as: (Hyland, 2005); Hansen and Liu (2005); Zainurrahman
(2010); Topping (2009); Lewis (2002) However, these researchers seemed
to reach a consensus of the definition of “peer feedback”.
According to Bartels (2004), peer feedback means feedback from your
fellow students. If one student is working on the same assignment as another
student, peer feedback can mean exchanging drafts and comments on each
other‟s drafts.
Peer feedback is defined by Yang (Zeng, 2006) as feedback that is
given by peer. That means having other students to read and to give
comments, corrections, criticisms, and suggestions on what other students
have written.
The significant advantages of peer feedback have been realized and
widely acknowledged by language researchers and tearchers as well. Through
studies and practice, not only students but also teachers take advandges of
peer feedback.
For students, when using peer feedback on writing, firstly, they “can
and do revise effectively” on the basis of comments from their peers -
Rollinson (2005). It also may be that becoming a critical reader of others‟
writing may make students more critical readers and revisers of their own
writing. Secondly, the peers will let the writer (student) know if his/her

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message was effective, and will encourage the writer to formulate his/her
writing in line with the characteristics and demands of the readers. Thirdly,
the peers are also potentially more sympathetic and provides instant feedback

circle. All these stages will certainly consume a significant amount of time.
In sum, there are a number of reasons why many teachers have chosen
to use peer feedback on writing in the ESL writing classroom because of its
many advantages above. And from these advantages, peer feedback on
writing can be very useful in a wide variety of classes with students of
different levels. Peer feedback on writing can also be valuable in classes
where improving speaking skills is just as important as improving writing
skills. Overall, this technique can be instrumental in helping students
understand the process of writing and become independent thinkers and
writers.

1.2. Previous studies on peer feedback and students’ writing
Many researches have been implemented to find out whether peer
feedback has impact on students‟ writing and there have been many various
results. Every researcher has given his/her evidence to support his/her
arguments about this matter.
In the article “Using peer feedback in the ESl writing class”, ELT
Journal, 59(1), pp.23-29, Rollinson (2005) brieftly summarized some of the
main arguments in favor and against peer feedback. He points out many
advantages of peer feedback on writing with illustrated figures and these are
the reasons why teachers have chosen to use peer feedback in the ESL writing
classroom. Beside many avandtages of peer feedback, he also points out some
drawbacks when using peer feedback and the suggested ways to limit these
drawbacks by explaining how teachers can establish a positive context for

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effective peer group response by organising proper procedures and training,
such as: (a) properly setting up the groups and establishing effective
procedures, b) adequate training, that is, coaching students in the principles

Japanese university freshmen who majored in English. The students' levels of
English proficiency were graded by a commercially available proficiency test
called General Tests of English Language Proficiency (G-TELP, Level 3 of
the test of used in the present study, with Level 1 being the highest and Level
4 the lowest). The test comprised three sections (listening, grammar and
vocabulary, and reading) with a total mark of 300 points. In this study, the
students in A Class and B Class were regarded as high-proficient and low-
proficient respectively. The students were compared in terms of their pre- and
post-tests, original drafts and rewrites, peer comments, and responses to the
comments. It was found that peer feedback had overall positive effects on the
compositions for both the high- and low-profícient students, with different
patterns observed in the relationship between the comments and revisions that
characterized the two groups.
In short, there have been many other researchers studying, practising and recognizing the advantages of peer feedback on writing. All of them points out different strong points and weak points of the use of peer feedback on writing. However, the advantages over the limitations of
peer feedback on writing are obviously undeniable.

13 Chapter 2: THE STUDY

2.1. Learning situation in writing class.
As have been mentioned previously, all students at Hai Phong
Community College (HPCC) share the same course for all the four terms.
They study New Cutting Edge – Elementary (Cunningham, Moor and Eales,
2005) in the first and second term, and New Cutting Edge – Pre-intermediate
(Cunningham, Moor and Carr, 2005) in the third and forth term.
The students share the same English course for all the four terms (each
term includes 60 periods, 45minutes/period) and some ESP for extra in each
term. In these four terms, students learn different skills, which are integrated

applied to improve students‟ writing.
Therefore, this section presents the participants, instrumentation and
data collection procedure, and data analysis procedure.

2.2.1. The participants
The participants chosen for the study are 42 students from one of my
classes who are studying with the New Cutting Edge – Elementary in their
first term. The teacher of this class is also the author of this paper. Actually, it
is difficult to select a random sample of individuals due to the large number of
students. Therefore, instead of randomly selecting individuals, the author
randomly selected the class for teaching. In this case, it is convenient for the
investigator to observe the participants to give feedback to each other‟s paper
as well as complete the questionnaire in class. More importantly, this class
has been assigned with a relatively equal proportion of good, average, and

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poor English proficiency students and there are both males and females.
Therefore, the result would be more objective.

2.2.2. Instrumentation
In this study, in order to obtain adequate data for the study, two main
instruments were used. They were documents analysis of students‟ peer
feedback on writing and the survey questionnaire for students.

Documents analysis of students’ peer feedback
The students in the first term have to study the first six modules of the
New Cutting Edge – Elementary with six different topics such as food,
personal attitudes and qualities, leisure and fitness activities, etc. However,
the students in this term have to complete five writing tasks. Then, the author

the appendix 2 and they were all familiar with those symbols. The students
were encouraged to provide suggestions that they think are correct for the
mistakes indicated. Then, the teacher asked students to swap their paragraphs
basing on her different diagrams in which she paired her students on the
criteria of students‟ English ability such as very good - good, good - fairly
good, fairly good - average so that students can help together. In the next
step, the teacher asked students to choose two sentences in their peers‟
paragraphs to give feedback. Students were asked to read the paragraphs
silently, taking notes and giving feedback to their peers‟ writings. Finally, the
students were given the opportunity to make changes or to rewrite their text
before handing it into the teacher. The teacher then collected all the students‟
writing sheets which were given peer feedback.
The process was carried out through students‟ five paragraphs. The
students were asked to write the first paragraph after finishing the first two

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modules and the second paragraph after module three. Students were asked to
choose two sentences in each paragraph and to give peer written feedback for
the same aspects of the use of articles and punctuation in the first and second
paragraph.
The teacher asked students to write the fourth paragraph after module
four and the fifth one after module five. Students were asked to choose two
sentences in each paragraph and to give peer written feedback for the same
aspects of preposition and word order in the fourth and fifth paragraph.
Students were asked to write the last paragraph after they had finished module
6. This time, the teacher asked students to give peer written feedback for all
aspects of the use of articles, punctuation, prepositions and word order for all
the sentences in the paragraph.
The students‟ drafts contained written feedback in sentence writing

feedback. They are the use of articles, punctuation, prepositions and word
order. Therefore, this part only discusses the way students gave feedback in
terms of the four aspects above.

Types of
mistakes
The total
number of
mistakes
The number
of mistakes
indicated
The number
of correct
suggestions
The number of
incorrect
suggestions
The use of
articles
49
23
c
7
Punctuation
27
19
9
5
Prepositions

order are the same (47%) while the percentage of correct suggestions for
mistakes related to the use od articles is the lower with 43%. These figures
prove that peer feedback is rather useful as to some extent it helps students
improve their sentence writings in general and their grammar in particular.