Students’ peer written feedback in paragraph writing skills among intermediate students at hanoi university of industry

Acknowledgement I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Ms. Nguyen Thu Hien, M.A. for her invaluable support, useful guidance and comments. I am truly grateful to her advice and suggestions right from the beginning when this study was only in its formative stage. I would also express my gratitude to all the teachers of English department at Hanoi University of Industry for their constructive and insightful comments, constant support as well as suggestions for this paper. Especially, I am grateful to the students in the three classes which I am in charge for their actively taking part in completing the writing tasks and answering the survey questionnaire. Without their help, this paper could not have been completed. Finally, my special thanks go to my friends and my family who have been beside me and have encouraged me a lot to fulfill my study. DECLARATION I confirm that this is my own research, and that it has not been published or submitted for any other degrees. Student's signature Nguyen Thi Lai Abstract The main aim of this minor thesis is to examine the way in which intermediate students at Hanoi University of Industry respond to their peers’ writing, the effectiveness of the peer written feedback and students’ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to their peers’ writings. In order to obtain adequate information for the study, document analysis of students’ peer written feedback and survey method were applied. The participants involved in the study were 100 intermediate students from three classes at HaUI. The analysis of the peer written feedback reveals that students gave feedback on all the areas of the paragraph especially on grammar and vocabulary. Also, the study results show that the peer written feedback is fairly effective to the students’ learning of writing. Despite the effectiveness of the peer written feedback to students’ writings, a large number of students at HaUI still have difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers’ writings and providing suggestions to improve those mistakes. Based on the findings, the researcher provides some suggestions to improve the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback. Table of contents Acknowledgement i Abstract ii Declaration iii List of tables, figures and appendices iv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 The rationale of the study 1 Aims of the study and research questions 2 Scope of the study 3 Significance of the study 3 Methods of the study 3 Organization of the paper 4 Chapter 2: Literature review 5 2.1. Theoretical backgrounds of feedback to students’ writing 5 2.1.1. Definitions of feedback 5 2.1.2. Types of feedback to students’ writing 6 2.1.2.1. Teacher’s feedback 6 2.1.2.2. Self-editing 6 2.1.2.3. Peer feedback 7 2.2. Different views of peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing 8 2.2.1. Arguments in favor of students’ peer written feedback in writing 8 2.2.2. Arguments against students’ peer written feedback in writing 10 2.3. Different ways of peer feedback in writing 11 2.3.1. Written comments 12 2.3.2. Talking about the paper 12 2.3.3. Using checklists 13 2.4. Guiding principles for effective peer written feedback 14 2.4.1. Before peer written feedback 15 2.4.2. During peer written feedback 16 2.4.3. After peer written feedback 16 Chapter 3: The study 18 3.1. The current situation of teaching and learning writing at HaUI 18 3.2. Methodology 18 3.2.1. The participants 18 3.2.2. Instrumentation 19 3.2.3. Data collection procedure 21 3.2.4. Data analysis procedure 22 Chapter 4: Result and discussion 23 4.1. The current practice of students’ peer written feedback in writing 23 4.1.1. Paragraph organization 23 4.1.2. Grammar 24 4.1.3. Vocabulary 26 4.1.4. General written comments 28 4.2. Improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback 29 4.3. Students’ perceived difficulties when giving written feedback to their peers’ writings 31 4.3.1. Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers’ writings 31 4.3.2. Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the mistakes in their peers’ writings 35 4.4. Implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback 39 Chapter 5: Conclusion 41 5.1. Summary 41 5.2. Limitations of the study 41 5.3. Suggestions for further studies 42 References Appendices Lists of tables Table 1: Students’ giving feedback on grammar 25 Table 2: Examples of students’ giving feedback on grammar 26 Table 3: Students’ giving feedback on vocabulary 27 Table 4: Examples of students’ giving feedback on vocabulary 28 Table 5: Students’ improvement in grammar and vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 30 Table 6: Students’ improvement in grammar after receiving peer written feedback 30 Table 7: Students’ improvement in vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 31 Table 8: Students’ perceived difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers’ writings 32 Table 9: Students’ perceived difficulties in providing suggestions for the indicated mistakes in their peers’ writings 36 List of figures Figure 1: The proportion of students who gave feedback on paragraph organization 23 Figure 2: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for the grammatical mistakes 24 Figure 3: The proportion of students who provided suggestions for the vocabulary mistakes 27 Figure 4: The proportion of students who gave general written comments 29 List of appendices Appendix 1: Questionnaire I Appendix 2: Checklist III Appendix 3: Symbols for correcting mistakes IV Chapter1: Introduction 1.1. The rationale of the study Nowadays, English is considered to be one of the key factors that help our country make faster progress on the way of industrialization and modernization. Therefore, the demand to use English fluently as well as to master the four basic skills is becoming essential among all students in general and students at Hanoi University of Industry in particular. Of the four skills, writing seems to be the most difficult but really important because it is especially necessary for them to acquire ESP lessons in their last term. Therefore, helping students enhance their writing skills is one of the teachers’ responsibilities. This can be done in a number of ways as Skroll (2003, p115) notes, “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”. One of these intervention strategies is students’ peer written feedback in writing. It is obvious that one of the most meaningful and important methods of teaching writing is the use of students’ peer written feedback. In this way, students write the first draft and exchange it with their peers. Then, they read each other’s paper and provide feedback, usually based on the checklist given by the teacher. The checklist focuses on three main areas of the writing: organization, grammar and vocabulary. The use of peer feedback especially peer written feedback in writing classrooms has been generally supported in the literature as a potentially valuable aid for its social cognitive, affective and methodological benefits (see, Mendonca and Johnson (1994), Villamil and De Guerreco (1996), Jacobs (1998), Brinton (1983). They all believe that peer feedback is very important and has great influence on the success of teaching and learning writing. Keh (1990) states that Peer feedback is essential to the teaching and learning writing as peer readers can provide useful feedback so that peer writers can and do revise effectively on the basis of comments from peer readers. Besides, it is found that when students become critical readers of others’ writings, they will be more critical readers and revisers of their own writings (Rollinson, 2005). These are the main reasons why a lot of teachers have chosen to use peer written feedback in the writing classroom. However, using peer written feedback in writing is not easy as it takes the teachers a lot of time and effort to teach writing skills. Recently, every school and university in Vietnam has tried to apply the latest methodology in teaching language skills in general and in teaching writing skills in particular in order to make language teaching and learning as effective as possible. Hanoi University of Industry is certainly not an exception. Founded in 2006, HaUI has different training programmes. Since its establishment, the university has paid great attention to English as one of the main subjects so that students after graduating should be able to use English confidently in their jobs and read documents written in English in their majors. Therefore, all students at HaUI study English for five terms. During these terms, they learn and practice the four basic skills and some ESP lessons. The textbooks such as International express - Elementary (Keith Harding and Liz Taylor, 2005), International express – Pre-intermediate (Keith Harding and Liz Taylor, 2005) and International Express – Intermediate (Keith Harding and Liz Taylor, 2005) are chosen as the materials at HaUI. The students share the same English course for the first four terms (each term includes 120 periods, 45minutes/period) and some ESP for the last term. In the first four terms, students learn different skills, which are integrated in a lesson as organized in the textbooks. However, writing skills are especially necessary for them. Each of the textbooks like that consists of twelve lessons with specific topic, vocabulary and grammar. At the end of each lesson, students are usually asked to write a paragraph of approximately 100 to 120 words based on the topic of the lesson to revise what they have learnt. This writing not only helps them revise the vocabulary and grammar but also gives them a chance to get used to writing and expressing ideas in English. The importance of writing is undeniable, yet, it places a heavy burden on teachers. A huge amount of feedback from teachers is required. In order to relieve the teachers’ heavy workload of marking the papers and make this process meaningful to students’ learning, a new way of giving feedback- peer written feedback provided by the intermediate students in their third term- was introduced. 1.2. Aims of the study and research questions This research is designed to investigate students’ peer written feedback in paragraphs writing skills among Intermediate students at Hanoi University of Industry. Its aims are to investigate students’ current practice of peer written feedback giving, the effectiveness of the peer written feedback and the students’ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to their peers’ writings. The thesis also desires to propose some implications for the teaching and learning writing using peer written feedback and provide some suggestions for further study. In order to achieve those aims, the research attempts to answer the following questions: How do students respond to their peers’ writings? How do students improve their writings after receiving peer written feedback? What are students’ perceived difficulties when giving feedback to their peers’ writings? 1.3. Scope of the study Feedback in writing is such a broad topic including teacher’s feedback and peer feedback. Therefore, within the framework of a minor thesis, this study focuses only on one type of feedback -peer written feedback- in paragraph writing skills among intermediate students at Hanoi University of Industry. 1.4. Significance of the study Theoretically, the study proves that peer written feedback is crucial to the teaching and learning of writing. Peer written feedback offers a number of advantages. Indeed, peer written feedback gives both the readers and the writers more opportunities for collaboration, consideration and reflection than oral negotiation and debate. It also gives the teacher a better chance of closely following the progress of individuals and groups, both in terms of the feedback offered and revisions made. Practically, the study shows that using peer written feedback not only eases the teachers’ burden in giving feedback to students’ writings but also helps students improve their writing skills. Obviously, when students read their peers’ writings, they not only help their peers recognize and correct the mistakes but also become more critical writers. 1.5. Methods of the study In this study, two methods were used in order to obtain adequate information for the study. They were document analysis and survey. First, document analysis of 100 students’ first drafts with the peer written feedback was done to find out how students provide written feedback to their peers’ writing. Then, the students’ first drafts were compared with their second drafts to see whether the peer written feedback helps students improve their writing. Second, the survey was done on the 100 students who had given peer written feedback to find out the students’ perceived difficulties in responding to their peers’ writing. 1.6. Organization of the paper The paper consists of five chapters as follows: Chapter 1 – Introduction – briefly states the rationale of the study, the aims, research questions, scope as well as the significance and organization of the study. Chapter 2 – Literature review- discusses the literature related to the feedback to students’ writing, different views and ways of peer feedback in writing as well as the guiding principles for effective peer written feedback. Chapter 3-The study-describes the current situation of the teaching and learning writing at HaUI and the methodology which deals with the participants, instrumentation, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure. Chapter 4 – Results and Discussion- analyzes and discusses the data and then draws the implications for the teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback. The last chapter – Chapter 5 – summarizes the major findings of the study, acknowledges its limitations and provides suggestions for further study. Chapter 2: Literature review 2.1. Theoretical backgrounds of feedback to students’ writing. 2.1.1. Definitions of feedback Although there have been so far few attempts in the literature to define the term feedback in teaching writing, researchers seem to have reached a consensus of the nature and function of the feedback. Various researchers define the term “feedback” in different ways, among which the one put forward by Keh (1990) is one of the most comprehensive. Keh considers feedback as “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for revision” (p. 294). In other words, when giving feedback, the reader gives the writer comments, questions and suggestions with an aim to help him/her revise the writing. According to Chaudron, (1988, p.133) feedback which is contrasted with the narrower notion of correction is therefore “an evitable constituent of classroom interaction” and “from the teacher’s point of view, the provision of feedback is a major means by which to inform learners of their accuracy of both their formal target language production and their classroom behavior and knowledge”. Thus, feedback can be considered as an effective means to communicate to the students about their writing. Through feedback, the student knows whether he or she has misled or confused the reader by not supplying enough information, illogical organization, lack of development of ideas, or something like inappropriate word-choice or tense (Keh, 1990). However, this information is much more helpful if it is provided on preliminary and intermediate stage, rather than on the final one as Seow (2002) claims that feedback is regarded as teacher’s quick initial reaction to the students’ drafts. Added to this, Rynandya and Richards (2003) state that if students write only one draft which is then graded by the teacher, feedback on what is wrong in the composition comes too late. This means feedback should be provided in the process of writing rather than in single act of producing a text as Raimes (1983, p.139) notes, “Responding to students’ writing is very much a part of the process of teaching writing”. That means feedback is very necessary for the success of the writing tasks. 2.1.2. Types of feedback to students’ writing 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. 2.1.2.1. Teacher’s feedback There has been limited literature on the effectiveness or the way in which teachers “correct” students’ compositions (Shrum and Glisan, 2002). It raises the question of whether teachers’ kind of correction and comment match students’ expectations (Murphy, 1994) or still presents a mismatch (Charles, 1990). It’s necessary to find out the ways to improve the quality of students’ written work (Shrum &Glisan, 2000). In terms of a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ expectations, Charles (1990) says that students are interested in comments on vocabulary, organization and content as surface-structure problems, meanwhile, teachers prefer to comment primarily on surface level features (Zamel, 1985). In other words, “much of the conflict over teacher response to written work has been whether teacher feedback should focus on form or on content” (Fathme and Wholly, 1990, p178). As a result, to improve the quality of teacher-feedback, teachers must decide whether to focus on form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics) or on content (e.g., organization and amount of detail). Much of the literature on correcting written errors supports the claim that learners’ writing skills may improve with teacher feedback that focuses on content rather on form. Besides, in order to make teachers’ feedback more effective, teachers should give students more control over the feedback they receive by underlining the parts of the text they are dissatisfied with .This will enable students to evaluate their own writing and set their goal (Charles, 1990). Hyland (1990) also agreed that this will lead to a high success rate. 2.1.2.2. Self-editing Raimes (1984, p.149) notes that “What students really need more than anything else is to develop the ability to read their own writing and to examine it critically, to learn how to express their meaning fluently, logically, and accurately”. He also believes that students need to be able to find and correct their own mistakes. Students’ attempt in language learning is one of the crucial factors towards their success. If a learner was aware of self-editing and tried to learn from his own failure, he would receive more chances of overcoming difficulties in learning than others who did not care why they failed. Besides, the techniques of reading closely and analyzing the writing develop students’ critical skills to their own writing. Importantly, the students need to develop the critical skills in checking their own writing right in the early stage when ideas are forming. However, in order to help students to revise their own writings effectively, the teacher should provide students with correction codes to work with. 2.1.2.3. 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. Additionally, Hansen and Liu (2005:1) also state that peer feedback is “the use of learners as source of information, and interactants for each other in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities normally taken on by teachers in commenting and critiquing each other’s performance in both written and o