2.3 Feedback on Students' Writing
Feedback is a key element in language learning. It can promote minimal or deep learning. Hattie and Timperely (2007) state that feedback is "information provided by an agent regarding some aspects of one's task performance". (p.81). Narciss (2008) also defines feedback as "all post-response information that is provided to a learner to inform the learner on his or her actual state of learning or performance". (p.127). Mory (2003) discusses four perspectives on how feedback supports learning. First, feedback can be considered as an incentive for increasing response rate and/ or accuracy. Second, feedback can be regarded as a reinforcer that automatically connects responses to prior stimuli (focused on correct
…show more content…
Writing scholars agree that feedback to students’ writing could come from three main sources: the teacher, the peers and the student writer (Harmer 1991; Celce-Murcia 1991; McDonough and Shaw 1993; Jordan 1997). Keh (1990: 295), on the other hand, writes that there are three areas of feedback: peer feedback, conferencing as feedback and teacher’s comments as feedback. The self-correction is just looking again at one’s written work and correcting errors; it is not considered as giving information to others. Now, let us briefly revise the three most common types of sources of information for treating students’ writing: Teacher feedback, Self-feedback and Peer …show more content…
Peer Feedback
Peer feedback is a popular source of feedback in the English second language/English foreign language (ESL/EFL) classroom. It is also called peer review, peer response and peer evaluation (Liu and Hansen, 2002). According to Liu (1998), peer feedback is a process in which learners read each other’s writings and provide comments on grammar, usage, content, word choice, and the structure of the essay.
Peer feedback can be defined in a more detail way as "the use of learners as sources of information and interactants for each other is such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by a formally trained teacher, tutor, or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other's drafts in both written and oral formats in the process of writing" (Liu and Hansen, 2002:1).
The rationale of peer feedback is explained by Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory. Vygotsky (1978) claims that mind develops through one's interaction with the world around him/her. He emphasize that learning is not an individual activity; but rather a cognitive activity that the nature of learning shifts the focus on learning from individual to the interaction within a social context. Thereby, peer interaction is cardinal to the improvement of students' learning, because it allows students to construct knowledge through social sharing and interaction (Liu et al.,