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

ĐỒNG HOÀNG MINH

THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK ON THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH
PROJECT AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY

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MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2016


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

ĐỒNG HOÀNG MINH

THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK ON THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH
PROJECT AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY


suggestions right from the beginning when this study was only on its formative
stage.
I would like to send my sincere thanks to my colleagues and the first year
students at Hanoi Law University who have enthusiastically filled out my survey
questionnaire and provided me with their writing papers. Without their assistance, it
would have been really difficult for me to handle the task.
I own a great debt of gratitude to my family for all the support I received to
finish this thesis.

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ABSTRACT
Peer feedback plays an essential part in enhancing students’ writing skills.
The reality of the students’ writing performances at Hanoi Law University suggests
that they still repeat common writing mistakes after their writing products are
reviewed carefully by the teachers.
This study is aimed at finding out students’ attitudes towards the use of peer
feedback activities in English writing classes and the extent peer feedback affects
their writing performances. An action research project, realized by means of survey
questionnaire and student writing analysis, was conducted in this study to achieve
the desired aims.
The results indicate that the students hold positive attitudes towards peer
feedback activities in learning English writing and a large number of them will
continue to use peer feedback in the future. The analysis of the students’ writing
papers show that the students made considerable improvement in writing English
under the application of peer feedback in learning process. In addition, the number
of writing mistakes in the students’ writing papers sharply fell after the action
research.


..............................................................................................................................7
1.2. Peer feedback in writing teaching.....................................................................8
1.2.1. Definition of feedback ................................................................................8
1.2.2. The importance of corrective feedback ......................................................9
1.2.3. Types of feedback ....................................................................................10
1.2.4. Definition and types of errors ...................................................................12
1.2.5. The training section ..................................................................................13
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY .........................................................................17
2.1. Research method .............................................................................................17
2.2. Data collection instruments ............................................................................19
2.2.1. Questionnaire............................................................................................19
2.2.2. Students’ writing analysis ........................................................................21
2.3. Participants of the study..................................................................................21
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ......................................23
3.1. Answer to the first research question: What are the students’ attitudes
towards peer feedback in English writing skills learning? ....................................23
3.1.1. Data collected from questionnaires ..........................................................23
3.2. Answer to the second research question: To what extent does the use of peer
feedback affect the students’ writing performance? ..............................................36
3.2.1. Data collected from first drafts and revised drafts of the writings ...........36
3.3. Summary .........................................................................................................40
PART C: CONCLUSION.......................................................................................41
1. Summary of the major findings .........................................................................41

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3. Limitations of the study .....................................................................................43
4. Recommendations for further studies ............................................................43
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................44

application in class .............................................................................................29
Figure 8: The students’ attitudes towards the effect of peer feedback after its
application in class .............................................................................................29
Table 2: The reasons why the students found peer feedback useful before and
after the application (data from the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire) 30
Table 3: The reasons why the students found peer feedback not useful before
and after its application (data from the pre-questionnaire and postquestionnaire) .....................................................................................................34
Figure 9: The students’ opinions on their future use of peer feedback ..............35

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Table 4: The scores for first drafts of the writing……………………………..35
Figure 10: The scores for first drafts of the writings .........................................37
Table 5: The scores for revised drafts of the writings ........................................37
Table 6: The results from the first drafts and revised drafts of the students’
writings ...............................................................................................................38
Figure 11: Number of errors in different aspects in the students’ first drafts and
revised drafts ......................................................................................................39

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Writing plays an important role in foreign language learning and students are
often required to do a great deal of writing. Among the four skills of English,
writing is a very difficult skill because non-native speakers often think in their own
native language when they write. Writing is therefore an intricate and complex task
and is affirmed to be “the most difficult of the language abilities to acquire” (Allen

faster with meaningful language practice in a rich linguistic environment and with
an informed policy of error correction on the part of the teacher” (p.15).
In the writing instruction in the EFL/ESL context, teachers meet some
difficulties in correcting the students’ errors in writing papers. The teachers have to
endure huge workload of correcting writing mistakes of all sorts due to the large
number of students. Furthermore, the students normally pay attention to the marks
they receive rather than the mistakes corrected by teachers. Worst of all, if a
student’s writing paper is full of red ink, he may be frustrated and his interest and
confidence in learning may be destroyed (Harmer, 2007, p. 120). Therefore,
teachers should find out more effective ways to enhance their writing teaching and
improve the students’ writing ability.
Besides the traditional teacher feedback, peer response has been proved to be
an effective type of feedback because it gives opportunities for students to write for
an immediate audience apart from the teacher, familiarize themselves with actual
readers who critically respond to their work, boost their confidence, and work
collaboratively (Hairston & Keene, 2003). Because of the tendency of
communicative language teaching and learner-centered teaching, students are
strongly encouraged to actively participate in language teaching. As a result, peer
feedback has become increasingly popular among the practitioners. Peer feedback is
also regarded as a method to improve writing skill for the students at HLU. This
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study is an attempt to examine the effects of peer feedback on the students’ writing
performance at this university.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
2.1. Aims of the study
As the title suggests, the overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the
effects of peer feedback on the students’ writing performance at HLU.
2.2. Objectives of the study

The findings of the present study are hoped to contribute a new implication
to teaching EFL writing, particularly to the area of error treatment. If peer feedback
is proven to be useful, it will be practiced as an alternative method to treat errors in
the students’ writing, and thus to improve the students’ writing performance.
7. Design of the study
The thesis consists of three parts, namely Introduction, Development and
Conclusion.
Part A: Introduction
This part presents the rationale, the aims, the scope, the methods and the
design of the study.
Part B: Development
This part includes three chapters, namely Literature Review, Methodology
and Data analysis and Discussion.
Chapter 1: Literature Review provides an overview of the writing teaching, errors
in general and peer feedback in particular.

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Chapter 2: Methodology presents the participants of the study, the research
instruments, the data collection procedure and the data analysis procedure from
which answers to the research questions could be found.
Chapter 3: Data Analysis and Discussion analyze the data collected from the survey
questionnaire and document analysis and present discussions with regards to the
findings presented.
Part C: Conclusion
In this part, the major findings, some recommendations, limitations of the
research as well as suggestions for further study are presented.
The appendices are the last part of the study following the reference.


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we must use a series of words and sentences which are grammatically and logically
linked.
1.1.2. Approaches to the teaching of writing: product versus process
approaches
Product approach is the traditional approach to teaching writing which
focuses on the final product, the coherent and the error-free text (Nuan, 1999). The
writing teachers who subscribe to the product approach pay more attention to see a
final writing paper and evaluate it against criteria of vocabulary use, grammar use,
and medical considerations such as spelling and punctuations, as well as content and
organization (Brown, 1994). Therefore, the teachers who favor product approach
typically provide their students with model essays and foster them to mimic these
pieces of writing to produce a similar product. Teacher feedback focuses on
correcting forms of essays, paragraphs and sentences. The major limitation of the
product approach is that learners might become passive and dependent on teachers
and textbook. In the 1970s, as a consequence of the limitations of this approach,
students were restricted in what they could write and how they could write it
(Jordan, 1997), the process approach began to develop.
Process approach is concerned with the processes of writing that enable the
product to be achieved. In this approach, writing is no longer regarded as a “linear
and fragmented procedure” (Hairston, 1982, p. 78) with the mere target at an error
free product. The aim of writing, as stated by Stewart (1988, as cited in Joe, 2006,
p.48), is a written communication with the writer himself, with his fellow leaners,
with his teacher and with his intended readers. Thus, the key role of writing is the
idea/the meaning rather than the form. Students are given instructions on how to
generate ideas for writing, identify the purpose and audience and write a series of
drafts so as to present written products that communicate their own ideas. In this
way, students can gradually discover how to express their ideas efficiently. In



1.2.2. The importance of corrective feedback
The aim of giving corrective feedback is to help the students find out a
problem with their production, thereby using the correct form following feedback.
According to Hyland (2004), students can enhance particular grammatical features
through corrective feedback within communicative second language programs.
Peer feedback is often considered as the process of giving students a chance
to “read and constructively criticize each other’s writing.” (Jacobs, 1987, p.325).
Students can identify their own strengths and weaknesses through the comments,
and later on will make students realize how to improve themselves. Tsui and Ng’s
(2000) also affirmed that students are likely to get a genuine sense of audience, a
sense of ownership of the text, and awareness of the weaknesses of their own
writing. The significance of corrective feedback is also stressed by Cole and Chan
(1994). They said that feedback can be either positive or negative and may function
as not only letting learners know how well they have performed but also increasing
encouragement and creating a supportive classroom atmosphere. The objective of
corrective feedback is to help the learners identify problems with their production
and they can use the correct form after feedback. Hyland (2004) claimed that
students can improve particular grammatical features through corrective feedback
within communicative second language programs. With regard to the teachers’
benefit, corrective feedback can save teachers’ time, especially in large classes.
Many researchers have given different definitions of feedback in language
learning. In fact, almost all of these definitions state that “feedback is what learners
get about the quality of their production on a given task, knowledge of results,
comments on skill performance, notes on writing assignments, approving nod and
forms of feedback that teachers often used with learners” Wlodkowski & Jaynes
(1990, p.93). In summary, providing feedback helps students develop their
sensitivity and their writing style. In other words, feedback is a significant factor of


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of their utterances due to their implicitness and ambiguity (Lyster & Ranta, 1997).
Inspite of that limitation, many teachers prefer recasts as corrective feedback in the
L2 classroom because of the benefits of providing recasts. The direct feedback
should be provided for complicated mistakes so that learners of low level of
language proficiency find it easier. Furthermore, recasts can provide correct forms
without risking embarrassing the learners (Ellis & Sheen, 2006; Lyster, 2004).
1.2.3.2. Text-specific feedback versus general feedback
Text-specific feedback refers to the feedback which has close relation to the
text at hand while general feedback adheres to any paper. Regarding the issue of
text-specific feedback or general feedback, most researchers agree that text-specific
feedback is of greater benefits to students than general feedback. According to
Seow (2002), text-specific response will facilitate students reclaiming meanings and
make the revision of initial drafts easier. As text-specific feedback accurately states
the kinds of mistakes students make, the causes of these mistakes and also makes
some recommendations for improvement; it is more likely that the errors are
corrected properly. According to Reid (1993), the feedback should be “detailed
enough to allow students to act, to commit to change their writings” (p. 218). On the
other hand, general feedback is also necessary in order for students to have a
general view of their writing. Therefore, text-specific and general feedback should
be combined together to enhance the quality of students’ writings.
1.2.3.3. Feedback focus on form versus on content
The problem of how teachers should respond to students’ writings is
controversial and there is little agreement among researchers about the type of
feedback to help students improve their writing skill. Much of the conflict over
teacher response has been whether feedback should focus on form (e.g., grammar,
mechanics) or on content (e.g., organization, amount of detail).



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system of the learner, while performance errors are just an imperfect reflection of
the learner’s linguistic competence. The occurrence of performance errors does not
mean that the learner does not know the language. In fact, errors occur due to such
factors as tiredness, drunkenness or external distraction.
Errors can also be classified into another two types in relation to
comprehensibility (Burt and Kiparsky, 1972). The two types are “global” and
“local” errors, which are also known as communicative and non-communicative
errors respectively (Hendrickson, 1978). The global or communicative errors are the
mistakes affecting the interpretation of the whole sentence, while the local or noncommunicative ones are just a part of it, a clause or a phrase. Errors that cause
irritation but do not prevent comprehension are recommended to receive a lower
priority of treatment than those hindering comprehension or deceiving the listeners.
Therefore, the “global” errors, rather than the “local” ones deserve most attention
and correction. On the other hand, there remains a risk that when a foreign language
learner could be well understood by well-meaning native speakers in spite of the
errors, the errors will become an enduring component of the learner’s competence.
1.2.5. The training section
Training the respondents on this technique is necessary so that they have a
clear understanding of what peer feedback is and how to carry it out.. In the first
lesson, there was a training stage for learners so that they have an idea of what peer
correction is and how to do it. According to Raimes (1983, p. 147), training learners
on this technique is vital because it directs students’ attention to the elements which
should be focused on. Stanley (1992, p. 230) also stated that it is unfair to require
students to be able to carry out these challenging tasks without being offered
organized practice with and discussion of the skills involved. Thus, the theory and
the results of this study strongly support the training to the students in the process of
applying peer feedback in writing class. One class-time period training was spent to


Redundant words

I am keen on for listening to music.

Vt

Verb tense

Yesterday, I go to the park.

VF

Verb form

She enjoys to read books.

N

Number

There are 40 worker in the factory.

Art

Article

A book is on the table.

WC

Prep

Preposition

Mark is in school now.

Cap

Capitalization

I have lived in london for two years.

Frag.

Fragment sentence

Because it snowed.

Run-on

Run-on sentence

The ship was enormous, its mast was
almost 40 feet high.

Cs

Comma splices

She is a teacher, she teachers