The effects of peer feedback on second and foreign language writing development

Process approaches to writing are widely used in various second language teaching contexts, and many teachers and researchers are trying to find more efficient and meaningful ways to help students to improve their writing skills. Especially in the revision process, students can get help from teacher feedback, so they can have more opportunities to improve their drafts. In a class of 30 students, however, it is very difficult for a teacher to provide timely feedback to all students. The quality and the amount of teacher feedback can fall off due to time constraints and the number of students' drafts. If it is used effectively, a great help to a teacher of a writing class, then is peer feedback. Peer feedback can provide such other benefits as a sense of audience and ownership, more meaningful collaborative learning, and student awareness of the strengths and weaknesses in their drafts. The following report discusses the nature of peer feedback in writing and illustrates the effects of such feedback on students' perspectives about the revision process. The report also traces impact of providing and receiving different types of feedback. It shows us the unique features of paper-and-pencil and computer-mediated peer feedback, and highlights the important points in linguistic and extra linguistic elements observed in peer feedback.