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Incorporating Online Peer Corrective Feedback into EFL College

Writing Instruction in Taiwan: Learning Outcomes and Student

Perceptions

Farid Lai

MA student, TESOL and Multimedia Instruction Track

Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan

Paper presented at 2015 Fu-Jen & Ren-Ming Conference

June, 2015

Abstract

Despite the increasing attention on peer feedback in the

field of second language (L2) writing, how and whether L2

students should provide feedback to their peers’ written work

has remained a source of disagreement, as shown in conflicting

evidence on the efficiency of L2 students’ peer feedback in

previous studies. Furthermore, the effect of asynchronous

direct online peer corrective feedback on Taiwanese EFL

learners has rarely been the focus of relevant studies in the

past, as most of the studies focused on synchronous online

discussion or peer feedback in the form of comment. By taking

account of the factor of cultural appropriateness into the

design and implementation of peer feedback activities, this

study aimed to examine whether the integration of peer and the

instructor’s corrective feedback rather than the instructor’s

feedback would benefit EFL college students in Taiwan learning

to write in English. The results suggested students generally

reacted positively toward the peer feedback activity and

perceived it facilitated their learning of English writing,

with observable improvement on their writing tasks. The

research findings provide insights for the factors which may

facilitate or impede EFL student learning from peer corrective

feedback.

Key words: Corrective feedback (CF), Direct Corrective feedback,

Peer Correction, English as a foreign language (EFL),

Output

1. Introduction

In the field of ESL and EFL writing, the effectiveness of

peer feedback has appealed to a number of researchers in recent

two decades (Ferris, 2003; Hu & Tsui, 2010). However, the

comparison of peer feedback with the instructor’s feedback did

not receive sufficient attention. These comparative studies

(e.g., Nelson & Carson, 1998; Miao, Badger & Zhen, 2006; Lin &

Chen, 2009) often viewed peer and the instructor’s feedback as

two dichotomous ends. In the context of Taiwan, the effect of

asynchronous direct online peer corrective feedback on

Taiwanese EFL learners has rarely been the focus of previous

studies which centered on either the impact of synchronous

online discussion or peer feedback in the form of comment on

the learners (e.g., Lin, Liu & Yuan, 2001; Wu, 2006; Liu, 2013;

Ho, 2015).

Therefore, this study intended to fill a gap in the

existing literature, exploring the impact of the integration of

asynchronous explicit peer corrective feedback and the

instructor’s feedback. Cultural appropriateness was taken into

account in the design of peer feedback tasks. There are two

specific foci: firstly, drawing upon Swain’s comprehensible

output hypothesis (1985, 1995)and social constructivism

(Vygotsky, 1978), the present research investigated whether the

integration of peer corrective feedback and instructor’s

feedback benefit more than the instructor’s feedback alone,

scrutinizing to what extent peer feedback functions differently

from the instructor. It attempts to find empirical evidence to

support the argument that through the processes of

collaborating with peers and of producing output, Taiwanese EFL

students actively engages in their learning rather than being a

passive recipient of knowledge. Another research focus was to

explore the students’ perceptions on peer corrective feedback

tasks, particularly in relation to their learning of writing.

Two research questions this study addressed are as follows:

Question 1: Under the circumstance which peer corrective

feedback is incorporated with the instructor’s feedback, does

peer corrective feedback effectively raise the EFL student’s

awareness on their grammatical errors?

Research Question 2: In the EFL context where is dominated by

the teacher-centered culture, what are the students’

perceptions of peer corrective feedback?

2. Literature Review

Three bodies of relevant literature have been reviewed to shape

this research design: peer review, output hypothesis, and

constructivism.

2.1 Peer Feedback

2.1.1. The Construct of Peer Review and Peer Corrective

Feedback

For two decades, the use of peer review has gained

increasing attention in the ESL and EFL field (Ferris, 2003; Hu

& Tsui, 2010). Nevertheless, how and whether L2 students should

provide feedback to their peers’ written work still remains a

source of disagreement among researchers (Truscott, 1996; Hu &

Tsui, 2010), evident in conflicting results on the efficiency

of L2 students’ peer review (Hu & Tsui, 2010). One reason for

such a discrepancy in results is related to the nature of

construct of peer review, which varied among these studies. For

some studies, peer review involved in the peer assessment

process (e.g., Miao, Badger, & Zhen, 2006; Hu & Tsui, 2010),

while for others, it mainly focused on peer correction without

any peer assessment involved (e.g., Lin & Chen,2009; Shokrpour,

Keshavarz & Jafari, 2013). Also, different means of

implementation of peer review might play a role in the

conflicting results of previous studies. For instance, Ho and

Savignon’s (2007) research revealed that students reacted

differently to face-to-face and computer-mediated peer review.

To avoid the confusion on the construct of peer review, the

present research adopted the term online peer corrective

feedback to ensure the specificity of the construct of peer

feedback.

Nonetheless, variations still exist within the domain of

peer corrective feedback. It is argued that direct and indirect

corrective feedback might have different impact on students’

improvement on writing (Lee, 1997; Ferris & Roberts, 2001;

Ferris, et al., 2000). Direct feedback refers to the feedback

which the correct form is provided to the students, while

indirect feedback only indicates the location of the error,

without providing the correction (Bitchener, Young & Cameron,

2005). Indirect corrective feedback can be further categorized

as coded and un-coded feedback. According to Bitchener, Young

and Cameron (2005), the coded feedback not only informs

students the location of their errors but also indicates the

type of the error, whereas un-coded feedback, no metalinguistic

information is provided to the student except the location of

the error. In addition, another line of research looked into

form of comment in peer review or peer corrective feedback for

the explicitly and quality of feedback on students’ revisions

(e.g., Liu & Sadler, 2003). However, this present study only

examined the direct and indirect feedback form. Variations in

different types and forms of peer feedback should be taken into

consideration when interpreting studies on peer review or peer

corrective feedback with caution.

2.1.2 Previous Studies on Online Peer Feedback for ESL or EFL

learners

Although several research projects have been undertaken

regarding the effect of peer feedback on ESL or EFL students’

writing, relatively few studied the impact of direct online

peer feedback, specifically direct corrective feedback (e.g.,

Lin, Liu, & Yuan, 2001; Matsumara & Hann, 2004; Wu, 2006; Liu,

2013; Ho, 2015). Due to the space constraint of this paper,

only a couple of these studies are cited in the following.

In Matsumara and Hann’s (2004) study, the effect of

different types of peer and the instructors’ feedback on 207

Japanese college students was examined. The first type of

feedback investigated in the study was termed online posting in

their study. Online posting referred to the un-coded feedback

that research participants would receive from their peers or

the instructor once they posted their writing on the class

bulletin board online. It was found that the participants who

received online posting feedback improved more than those who

did not in their essay writing task. Nonetheless, as the

students were able to choose they would receive the

abovementioned feedback or not, the students who received

online posting might be more motivated than others in the first

place, resulting in a confounding variable for the result.

Lin, Liu, and Yuan (2001) conducted a study, examining

whether the type of online peer feedback or students’ learning

style affect English writing performance of 58 Taiwanese

college science majors. The quantitative result showed that

students who were more inclined to follow the instructions

could provide more helpful peer feedback. More specific peer

feedback was found to be much more helpful for students who

were less willing to follow the instructions.

2.1.3 Issues Regarding Cultural Appropriateness of Peer

Feedback

According to Truscott (1996), no consensus among

researchers, instructors, and students was found regarding how

and whether L2 students’ should provide feedback to their

peers’ written work. Although a substantial number of research

indicated the educational benefit of peer feedback for second

language English writing (e.g., Berg, 1999; Tsui & Ng, 2000;

Ferris, 2003), there existed different perspectives on the

implementation of peer feedback for students from certain

cultural backgrounds. For instance, Nelson and Carson (1998)

argued Chinese-speaking students were more likely to show

negative views toward peer feedback than Spanish-speaking

students. Other studies also identified a similar tendency that

Chinese-speaking students tend to trust the instructor’s

feedback more than peer feedback (Sengupta, 1998; Zhang, 1999;

Tsui & Ng, 2000; Yang, Badger & Yu, 2006). Moreover, Chinese-

speaking ESL students were found less likely to criticize

others in peer feedback as they “will generally work toward

maintaining group harmony and mutual face-saving to maintain a

state of cohesion” (Carson & Nelson, 1994, p.23). Some studies

(e.g., Hansen & Liu, 2005; Hu, 2006) showed the unsuccessful

implementation of peer feedback in Chinese-speaking cultures

may attribute to lack of experience and training (Hansen & Liu

2005; Hu 2006). The sociolinguistic rule of peer communication

differed widely between different cultures (Allaei &

Connor,1990), which might affect the implementation of peer

feedback in a second language English classroom. These insights

about cultural factor in the implementation of peer feedback

inform the design of the present research which is more

appropriate to Taiwanese classroom culture. Relevant details of

research design will be elaborated in next section: Section 3.

2.2. Output Hypothesis: Language-Related Episodes (LREs),

Noticing, Modified Output

The role of the learner’s output on language acquisition has

been disputed in the field of second language acquisition. On

one hand, Krashen (2008) claimed that input is the main cause

for language acquisition, while output rarely makes substantial

contribution to it, proposing “language acquisition is possible

without output of any kind” (Krashen, 2008. p.182). This is

consistent with the traditional view that output is regarded as

the product, rather than process of second language acquisition

(Swain, 2005). On the other hand, Swain and Lapkin (1995)

declared that output enhances second language acquisition in

ways that are different from those of input under certain

conditions. The importance of output is highlighted, because it

requires learners to process language with more mental effort

in which learners can play a more active and , responsible role

in learning (Swain, 1995).

Learners’ production of corrective feedback could be

examined with relevant concepts in Output Hypothesis, language-

related episodes (LREs), noticing, and modified output.

Firstly, Swain (1997) defined a LRE is any part of a

conversation that the learner talks about their own language

problem, or other forms of correction conducted by the learner

themselves, such as self- and peer correction. By participating

in LREs, as Swain (1995) argued, the learner plays a more

active and responsible role for having to process language with

more mental efforts in making his/her language output clear to

his/her audience. Furthermore, LRE could be a major indicator

for the learner’s metalinguistic reflection, as the learners

try to explicitly point out their or others’ problem of

language use (Swain, 1998). At the same time, LRE serves as a

salient source for language learning, as learners actively

reflect and examine their or others’ language use in the

process of LREs (Swain, 2005).

Secondly, with regard to noticing, Schmidt (1995)

explicated that even though intention of learning is not a

necessary component for language acquisition, voluntary or

involuntary attention to the material is a precondition for

learning, as distribution of attention is necessary for a

stimulus to be encoded into long-term memory.

Thirdly, the concept of modified output, a type of uptake,

which is defined as“the learner’s modification of a problematic

form that invited feedback” (Egi, 2010, p.2). Swain (1995)

stressed the importance of modified output for second language

acquisition, suggesting the feedback could help prompt modified

output from the learner.

In the context of providing corrective feedback, the

learner engages in LREs and thus produces output by referring

to their peer feedback. Noticing is crucial, as it is

associated with the awareness of the gap of what the learner

can correct and what they manage to correct. Participating in

the peer correction process allows the learner to enhance their

metalinguistic reflection and noticing on errors. In addition,

receiving corrective feedback from peers may help the learner

to produce modified output, which in turn enables them to

transform it into their own uptake. In short, linking output

hypothesis with corrective feedback, the salience lies in that

the learners play a more active role in producing the output of

corrective feedback rather than waiting for teachers’

correction (Gielen, Tops, Dochy, Onghena, & Smeets, 2010).

2.3 Constructivism

Another theory relevant to peer correction is constructivism.

The theory of constructivism refers to the idea that learners

construct knowledge for themselves building on the foundation of

their previous learning through social interactions with others,

particularly capable peers (Vygotsky, 1978). Instead of being

passive recipients, learners act as active and independent

learners. Translating the theory of constructivism into the

educational design is to create opportunities for the learner to

relate their prior knowledge and experiences to construct new

concepts and to motivate them in learning (İşman, 2011).

Villamil and De Guerrero (1997) indicated peer correction

provides opportunities for bilateral participation of learning

in which students play an active role in both teaching and

learning. Chen (2010) also pointed out that peer correction

could provoke reflection and deeper metalinguistic awareness. In

this sense, the implementation of peer correction is in

accordance with the guiding principle of the learning theory of

constructivism centered on social interaction with others, and

it seeks to create a more student-centered context for learning.

To sum up this section, the aforementioned theories and

empirical studies on peer review were drawn upon to justify

theoretical basis and methodological issues in this research

design.

3. Method

3.1 Research Context and Participants

This study was conducted in a class of Freshman English

course attended by non-English major EFL students at a private

university in Northern Taiwan, in the fall semester of 2014

academic year. The Freshman English course was a 2-credit

university required course; the class met one hundred minutes

every week. The class was taught by one full-time English

instructor at the particular university. The researcher served

as the course teaching assistant, assisting the course

instructor to prepare relevant teaching materials, design class

tasks and provide feedback to students’ assignments. The

researcher took the role as a participant-observer, observing

students’ performance in class and interacting with them. The

instructor did not introduce the researcher as a teaching

assistant to the students to avoid forming power relation

between the researcher and the student participants.

The class consisted of the students from the College of

Management, including 18 students from the Department of

Business Administration (male: 8, female: 10) and 19 students

from the Department of Finance and International Business (male:

6, female: 13). In total, 37 students were participants in the

present research (male: 14, female: 23). The class was

categorized as a high-intermediate English class by the

particular university as students were assigned to English

classes according to the English subject score in the Joint

College Entrance Exam.

3.2 Research Procedure

This research lasted for one academic semester, 18 weeks,

from the mid of September, 2014 to the mid of January, 2015 and

centered on the intervention of peer correction for student

writing. 37 students as the research participants completed six

online writing tasks (see Appendix A: the sample of online

writing task). The topics of these six tasks focused on issues

related to class materials or students’ daily lives. The

required minimal length of writing for each task essay was 120

words. All the tasks and correction were conducted through the

university distance learning platform: iCAN website

(http://www.elearn.fju.edu.tw/), in which the students were able

to submit essays, receive instructor’s feedback and conduct peer

correction online.

The six online writing tasks could be categorized as three

kinds being implemented in three phases, the baseline phase, the

intervention phase, and the closing phase; the shift from the

baseline phase to the intervention phase took place when the

peer correction task was first applied to the class, while the

closing phase took place in the last two tasks. The flow chart

of these three phases is presented in Figure 1.

Phase 1: The baseline phaseTime duration:Week 1~Week 5Major tasks: 1). online writing tasks 1 and 2: 1st and 2nd drafts.2). instructor’s feedback.

The students wrote the 1st drafts for onlinewriting tasks 1 and 2.

The students received the error-coded-feedback regarding their 1st drafts from theinstructor.

Based on the correction codes, the studentsrevised their 1st drafts for online writing task 1 or 2.

The students received explicit online corrective feedback for their 2nd drafts from the instructor.

Phase 2: Peer correction phaseTime duration:Week 6 to Week15Major tasks1). online writing tasks 3 and 4: 1st and 2nd drafts.2). peer correction3). peer corrective feedback and instructor’s feedback.

The students wrote the 1st drafts for onlinewriting tasks 3 and 4.

The instructor provided the guidelines for the students how to provide peer corrective feedback.

Each student provided the feedback to his/her peer anonymously.

The students received two kinds of online feedback, peer feedback as directive corrective feedback and error-coded-feedback from the instructor, presented in the same digital file.

The students revised their 1st drafts for online writing tasks 3 and 4 based on two kinds of feedback.

The students received online corrective feedback for their 2nd drafts from the instructor.

Phase 3: The evaluation phaseTime duration:Week 16~Week 18Major task: online writingtasks 5 and 6:1st drafts

The students wrote the 1st drafts for onlinewriting tasks 5 and 6.

The students received online corrective feedback for their 1st drafts from the instructor.

13 out of 37 students were invited to attend the interview on their perceptions of peer correction.

Phase 1: The baseline phase

As shown in Figure 1, 37 students participated in the first

two online writing tasks (task 1 and task 2). For each task,

each student first wrote a short written text and then

submitted it online (iCAN course website) to the instructor.

The first drafts for tasks 1 and 2 serve as pre-test writing

samples. After all students submitted their written work, the

researcher and the instructor worked together to provide the

error-coded-feedback based on Miao, Badger, and Zhen’s (2006,

p.196) framework on correction codes (See Appendix B) was

employed, because it had been designed to analyze common errors

in English writing composed by Chinese English speaking

students. The instructor and the researcher highlighted each

error with background color of yellow (See Appendix C: one

example with color error coding). After receiving the error-

coded-feedback from the instructor, the students revised their

first drafts completed for either task 1 or 2. At the end of

baseline phase, the students received direct corrective

feedback to their revised drafts. Also, students engaged in one

class activity on error correction. The purpose of such an

activity is to investigate whether the students were capable of

providing their peers direct corrective feedback. In that

activity, the students were given the opportunity to discuss

common errors identified in their drafts completed in tasks 1

and 2 and later understand how to revise these errors based on

error-correction codes from the instructor.

Phase 2: The peer correction phase

For online writing tasks 3 and 4, the students were required

to provide corrective feedback to their peers and posted peer

feedback on the distance learning platform, iCAN course

website. In other words, in online writing tasks 3 and 4, each

student needed to provide corrective feedback to one of their

peers’ first drafts; and the peer was chosen randomly. The

brief procedure of tasks 3 and 4 incorporating with peer

correction is briefly documented in Figure 1: Phase 2.

Due to the mutual face-saving issues and the inclination to

maintain group harmony among Chinese speaking students (Carson

& Nelson, 1994), the peer correction provider and receiver were

kept anonymous to each other in peer correction. Given that the

mutual face-saving issues possibly affect the student

participants’ behavior of providing and receiving feedback, in

this study, the students were not asked to assess the overall

quality of their peers’ writing and always gave an A to their

peers to meet the ICAN’s default function.

Considering the students’ desire to save face and lack of

confidence in their English, the students were encouraged to

provide as many corrections as possible even if they were not

certain of their own corrections. Unlike the error-coded-

feedback provided by the instructor, instead of using

correction codes, the students were advised to provide direct

corrective feedback. In order to observe the students’ degree

of certainty on each correction, the students were given the

guidelines to mark their corrections in different ways to

indicate their degree of certainty on corrections.

To be brief, three types of correction were classified.

Firstly, the students were certain of their corrective

feedback, they would highlight the erroneous parts with red

background color while typing their revisions in brackets

following the erroneous parts. Secondly, if they were certain

of the errors but not their own corrective feedback, they would

highlight the erroneous parts with green background color and

type their revisions in brackets following the erroneous parts.

Thirdly, if they were only certain of the errors while not able

to provide direct corrective feedback, they would only

highlight the erroneous parts with light blue background color.

This type of feedback here is indirect corrective feedback as

no direct corrective feedback was provided.

The students then received their peer corrective feedback

along with the error-coded-feedback from the instructor as what

they received in the baseline phase. The peer corrective

feedback and the instructor’s error-coded-feedback were put in

the same digital file; to put specifically, peer corrective

feedback was first provided, followed by the instructor’s

error-coded-feedback. To put the peer feedback before the

instructor’s feedback was to ensure the students pay attention

to peer corrective feedback when they revised their first

drafts. The students could then judge by themselves whether

they revise their writing based on peer feedback or not.

Phase 3: The evaluation phase

The last phase is the evaluation phase with the aim to

investigate the effect of the online peer correction task and

explore the students’ perceptions of peer correction. As the

timing of task 5 and 6 was close to the final exam week, the

students would not need to revise their writing after

submission. Furthermore, due to the constraint of time for

coding, the students in did not receive coded feedback from the

instructor. At the end of the intervention of peer correction,

13 out of 37 students were invited to attend the interview on

their perspective on participating in online peer corrective

feedback in relation to their learning of English writing.

3.3 Data Collection

Two major data sources were collected to answer three

research questions: collection of student writing, including

peer reviews for two online writing tasks, as well as

interview. Prior to data collection, 37 student participants

were given the consent form which precisely defines the

research aim and documents relevant details, gaining their

permission of using drafts they composed in 6 online writing

tasks. 13 out of 37 students also indicated their agreement to

attend the interview and allow their interview data transcribed

and used for this research purpose. All the data collected was

kept confidential, following the research ethics in educational

research.

Collection of student writing

All the first drafts composed by 37 student participants in

6 online learning tasks were collected. The revised drafts for

online writing tasks 1 to 4 and the peer correction for task 3

and 4 were also collected, but these two data sets of writing

only serve as a reference for data analysis presented in this

paper. All data of student writing and peer correction were

preserved in digital format.

Interview

13 out of 37 student participants were randomly selected to

attend the interview. The interview was conducted, with the aim

to examine the students’ perceptions of the peer correction

task, specifically to what extent providing and receiving peer

corrective feedback could raise the students’ awareness on

grammatical errors. Semi-structured format of interview was

adopted, as the core interview questions were asked to elicit

students’ responses on peer correction task and flexibility was

given for each student being interviewed to elaborate their own

thoughts. To ensure the interviewees to freely express their

ideas, the interviews were conducted in Chinese; the

interviewees were encouraged to provide both positive and

negative responses to peer correction task. The core interview

questions are listed both in English and Chinese in Appendix D.

The interview data later was transcribed and translated by the

researcher from English into Chinese, presenting to the student

participants to verify the transcripts faithfully represent

their accounts.

4. Data Analysis

Both quantitative and qualitative analyses would be

undertaken to address research questions.

Quantitative analysis: Firstly, data of student writing were

quantified based on the percentage of errors in the students’

first drafts for 6 online writing tasks. This quantitative data

analysis was presented in descriptive statistics regarding the

number of errors in the students’ writing as the indicator of

their writing performance.

Qualitative analysis: In addition to the quantitative analysis,

the researcher interviewed 13 student participants to better

understand their perceptions about peer correction. Thematic

analysis was conducted for analyzing interview data.

Specifically, the researcher read through the interview data

with caution, identified themes through inductive and deductive

analysis and then interpreted them in relation to the previous

literature on peer correction.

To ensure the inter-rater reliability, the instructor and

the researcher worked on the correction code together to reach

the consensus before sending error-code-feedback to the

students. For the peer correction activities, the peer’s work

which each student participant for providing corrective

feedback was randomly assigned to avoid potential threat to

reliability, which resulted from the student’s inclination of

mutual face-saving.

5. Findings

The major research findings are presented as in response to

two research questions.

Question 1: The effect of the integration of the instructor’s and peer corrective

feedback

The percentages of the erroneous parts of the students’

writing for the six tasks were counted. The average number of

the percentage for each type of error and the total amount of

the erroneous part are presented in Table 1 below.

Table 1 The average number of the percentages for different types of error and in total

V S ArtPre

p

Pro

n

Con

jNE WW MW UnW SS P RO CL UE

Tot

al

Task

1

0.3

8

0.2

6

0.3

80.3 0

0.2

2

0.7

4

2.0

8

0.7

8

0.8

1

3.5

4

0.3

6

0.1

7

0.0

1

2.5

3

12.

56

Task

2

0.7

5

0.3

40.7

0.2

5

0.1

1

0.3

8

0.7

32.5

0.7

8

0.6

3

3.8

6

0.2

4

0.2

4

0.0

6

2.4

9

14.

06

Task

30.5

0.1

7

0.6

4

0.5

9

0.0

9

0.3

4

1.7

2

2.3

8

0.8

8

0.7

4

4.5

8

0.2

5

0.3

10.1 1.2

14.

49

Task

4

0.8

6

0.4

1

0.5

1

0.3

30

0.3

3

0.5

2

2.2

6

0.9

30.9

1.7

9

0.1

8

0.1

6

0.1

5

0.8

3

10.

16

Task

5

0.9

5

0.1

5

0.4

7

0.3

2

0.0

7

0.0

8

1.0

2

2.2

5

0.8

8

0.8

3

1.6

7

0.2

1

0.3

9

0.1

3

2.0

5

11.

47

Task

6

0.6

9

0.2

7

0.8

5

0.3

2

0.0

5

0.2

4

0.8

1

1.9

1

0.8

3

0.4

5

1.5

7

0.4

4

0.2

5

0.5

8

0.4

7

9.7

3

As shown in Table 1, the average proportion of the

students’ erroneous part firstly increased slightly from 12.56%

in task 1 to 14.06% in task 2, and then it gradually decreased

in the following tasks. After undertaking peer correction for

two tasks (tasks 3 and 4), the proportion of the students’

errors dropped in the last task (task 6): 9.73%. The most

common error types are wrong word usage, sentence structure and

unclear expression; the latter two types showed a declining

tendency at the last phase of this study (tasks 5 and 6)

Whereas the students made improvement in their writing by

having fewer errors, the quality of peer feedback varied among

individual students. Some were able to provide comprehensive

feedback to their peers, but others were only able to mark a

few parts they perceived to be erroneous without providing any

direct corrective feedback. All 37 student participants

submitted their peer feedback for task 3, while only 23

students provided their second peer feedback for task 4. To

examine the reason of the low submission rate, during the

interview, the researcher asked those who did not complete

their second peer feedback for possible reasons of not

submitting their second peer feedback. These students’

responses are elaborated in the following results of interview

data analysis.

Question 2: The Participants’ Perceptions on Peer Correction

13 out of 37 students were interviewed after completing all 6

writing tasks and peer correction. Among all the interviewees,

7 students reported they favored the peer correction task,

while 4 students reported that they didn't endorse the task.

Among those who didn’t like the task, 1 student stated that she

disliked it because she didn’t know she had received explicit

feedback from the instructor in response to the peer feedback

she provided. The other 3 students simply felt they couldn't

make sure the peer correction they provided or received were

correct. The rest 2 students held the neutral stance toward the

task.

10 of the interviewees reported that they considered they

benefited from conducting peer correction, while only 5

regarded the peer feedback they received benefited them.

Nevertheless, 9 of them also reported that they didn’t change

their writing attitude after being aware that other peers would

read their written work. As for those who did not submit their

second peer feedback for task 4, the majority of them responded

they faced difficulties uploading the file, and 2 even claimed

that they had actually submitted the peer feedback, but

probably uploaded it to a wrong space. Only 1 student admitted

the reason for her not submitting the second peer review was

that she did not find peer correction helpful to her writing.

6. Discussion and Conclusion

As evident in Table 1, the overall proportion of errors

demonstrated a decreasing tendency in the tasks in the phases 2

and 3. Among the error types scrutinized in the study, the

number of error in student writing in 6 online writing tasks,

two types: sentence structure and unclear expression differed

most in task 1 and task 6. The decrease in errors of sentence

structure might be associated with the fact that the digital

format of the texts made it easy for student to examine their

grammar uses through the Internet. With regard to unclear

expression, the researcher’s classroom observation of student

behavior in online writing tasks suggest students often

resorted to Chinese-to-English translation to express their

ideas; for instance, the literal translation of Chinese

idiomatic expression into their English writing. Students’

reliance on direct Chinese-to-English translation sometimes

made it difficult for the reader comprehending their writing,

but with the feedback they received from the instructor or the

peer, they gradually learned certain types of direct

translation would impede intelligibility and thus avoided using

them.

Since there was no control group in this study, it is

difficult to examine whether the students’ improvement on

writing was a contribution of the peer feedback task or the

instructor’s coded feedback. Nonetheless, students’ response in

the interview provided insights into to what extent the

students perceived the peer feedback task beneficial. With

varied quality of the peer feedback, it is not surprising that

many students claimed that conducting peer feedback was proven

more helpful than receiving peer feedback. Their responses are

in line with output hypothesis: the process they reflected and

examined others’ language use in peer review enabled them to

foster grammatical awareness and to become more active in their

learning processes; they regarded producing modified output in

correcting their peers’ work more helpful than reading the

feedback from their peers.

Students’ low submission rate for the second peer feedback

and their response suggested that students were not accustomed

to submitting peer feedback online through the iCAN platform.

The students mentioned that a clear explanation regarding how

to submit peer feedback on iCAN was only provided before the

first peer feedback task. Since they did not have done any peer

other feedback task so that forgot how to submit their second

peer feedback. Students’ responses, to larger or lesser degree,

indicated that the peer feedback platform on iCAN is not user-

friendly.

The students’ response whether they favoured the peer

feedback also reflected the issue of cultural appropriateness

of peer feedback. Although 7 interviewees reacted positively

toward peer feedback task, 4 students did not acknowledge the

value of such a task for their uncertainty of peer feedback

they received being correct or not. This finding suggested that

the design of the study successfully eliminated the threat of

face-saving issues contaminating the nature of peer feedback,

but not some students’ mistrust toward the degree of accuracy

in peer feedback.

To conclude, this study revealed that the incorporation of

the instructor’s feedback and online peer corrective feedback

is beneficial to Taiwanese EFL college students’ English

writing under the circumstance in which peer feedback was

carried out in a culturally appropriate manner without

additional peer review training required beforehand. This

finding contributes new insights to the future EFL writing

pedagogy, particularly, incorporating peer correction with

other writing tasks. A control group is also needed for further

investigation on the effect of online corrective peer feedback,

as it is difficult to identify whether the students’

improvement on writing should be contributed to the peer

feedback activity or the feedback they received from the

instructor.

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Appendix A

Sample: Online Writing Task

Freshman English Online Writing Task (1): Sports

2014/10/01 (Wed) 8:10-9:00

Student Name: Student No.:

Department:

Instructor: Dr. Lydia Tseng

TASK (1)

Why are people from different regions good at different kinds

of sports? Is it because of racial, cultural, climate

difference or any other factors? Please elaborate your ideas.

Tips of writing: You’re recommended to write in a paragraph

or in an essay (more than a paragraph). Please include a

topic sentence (the main idea/argument) in each paragraph

and underline it and supporting details. Regarding

supporting details, make good use your personal experience,

critical reading or observation of issues related to sports

to write about examples or/and explanations to support your

topic sentence(s).

Length of your writing: 120-150 words, no more than 200

words.

Format: Please keep the first line of a paragraph indent

(leave 4 spaces, and then start the first line) and keep

double-spaced.

Please submit your writing as a word attachment with the

file name and upload it to iCAN website: student

numberChinese name_task1, e.g. 403382314XXX_task1

YOUR WRITING

Appendix B

Definition of Revising Codes, adopted and modified from Miao, Badger, and Zhen’s

(2006, p.196)

V Error in verb tense/verb form (active/passive voice,

present/past participle)

S Spelling error

Art Article/other determiner missing or unnecessary or

incorrectly used

Prep Preposition incorrectly used

Pron Pronoun

Conj Conjunction incorrectly used

NE Noun ending (plural or possessive) missing or unnecessary

WW Wrong word/ wrong word form

MW Missing word

UnW Unnecessary word

SS Sentence structure: incorrect structure, sentence fragment

P Punctuation Wrong

RO Run-on

CL Capital Letter

UE Unclear expression

Appendix C

An example with color error coding

There are thousands of different sports in the world and

each of the sports (Noun ending) get (Verb form) a large number

of supporters. What makes people obsess (Wrong word form) with

different kind of sport? It is the environment around us.

Take some countries in Africa for example, runners who win

the price are mostly born and grow up in the high mountain

(Noun ending) there, which improves their cardiopulmonary

system. When these runners get better cardiopulmonary system,

they don’t (Unnecessary word) can keep more energy than other

(Noun ending). That’s why they always get the golden medal in

many racing competitions. While these people are success(Wrong

word form) in many racing (Unclear expression) game (Noun

ending), they seldom get flying colors in the swimming

competition because Africa is a continent lack of water. There

is even no(Wrong word) enough water for people there to drink!

In this situation, how can them practice swimming and try to

achieve the price?

So(Conjunction), it is the environment that differs our

preference in sports or even more(Unclear expression).

Appendix D

Core semi-structured interview questions with the participants in the experimental

group

1) To what extent is peer correction an efficient way for you

to learn English writing? Please elaborate your reason(s).

線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線 線線線線線線？。

2) To what extent do peer correction activities help you notice

grammatical errors? Please elaborate your reason(s).

線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線 線線線線線線？。

3) To what extent, do you like the peer correction activities?

Please elaborate your reason(s)

線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線線 線線線線線線？。