同伴互评对不同写作水平的非英语专业大学生作文修改的影响.pdf

Abstract In China, English learning is an essential part of the college curriculum. Among the four basic skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing and its development has been a big headache and kept troubling college teachers and students. To improve the situation, practitioners and researchers have been trying very hard to find effective approaches. One of the approaches is the process approach. In the process approach, feedback and revision are two central elements. There are various kinds of feedback, among which teacher feedback and peer feedback have aroused the most attention. However, feedback on writing, especially peer feedback, has not been well-researched or practiced in China. Although there have been a number of studies aboard, no unified conclusions have been drawn. Considering this phenomenon, the present study attempted to probe into the effects of peer feedback on composition revision of non-English majors of different writing proficiency levels. The research questions are as follows: 1) How effective would peer feedback activities be for non-English majors in revising their compositions? And in which writing dimensions (organization, content, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics)? 2) Would peer feedback activities be effective for all levels of writing proficiency in all the writing dimensions investigated? To answer the research questions, the author conducted an 11-week empirical study on one class of 40 subjects. In the first week, pretest, pretraining the subjects and grouping the subjects according to their writing proficiency levels were carried out. Then in the following six weeks, the subjects were to finish three compositions and peer feedback would be carried o