名古屋外国語大学論集第7号

2020年7月

Research Note

Peer Review Instruction in the EFL Writing
Classroom
Steven CHARLES

Introduction
While peer review is well-established in the writing classroom, many students
lack the experience and skills to give effective feedback to their peers. Minus
proper training, peer review sessions can become frustrating for teachers andstudents. This paper tracks a 15-week project conducted at a university in Japanin which second-year students read and gave feedback on three papers fromprevious classes. The three papers covered the same three topics as the students
in this project were assigned during the term. The students’ assessments andcomments were then compared to the teacher’s and discussed in the class in orderto improve students’ peer review skills. This form of modelling relied mainly on
implicit training as students were not given explicit instruction on how to evaluate the three papers, but rather were given advice after having read the papers.

Literature Review
A key problem with implementing peer review in the classroom is thatstudents often do not understand the purpose of it. Berg (1999a) argued that peer
response must be seen as a “worthwhile activity” (p. 21) for the purpose of peers
245supporting each other. While the mechanics of peer review can be explainedlater, it must be explained to students why they are doing it.
While many students may worry their feedback is inferior to the teacher’s,
it should be explained to students that peer feedback may be generally different
from that of a more experienced teacher, but also valuable to student writers. In
addition, Rollinson (2005) described the peer feedback process as a “collaborative dialogue” among the students which can complement “the more one-way
interaction between teacher and student” (p. 26).
Typically, peer feedback sessions involve students reading and evaluatingeach other’s drafts. This side project, in conjunction with the aforementioned
process, incorporates a form of modeling into the peer feedback process. Wette(2015) described this as “present[ing] flawed or exemplary text products foranalysis and discussion” (p. 75). Students were asked to read and evaluate threepapers from a previous year on the same topics they were concurrently working
on. The students then shared their evaluations with the entire class, as advisedby Berg (1999b).
Cote (2018) explained to his peer reviewers that there are four categories
of statement and questions types to be presented to student writers: evaluation,clarification, suggestion and alteration. The students documented in this paper
were also taught similar steps. However, for the purpose of this project, onlyevaluation, specifically numerical evaluation, was recorded and analyzed.

Methods
This project was conducted on two second-year writing classes, consisting of
27 students majoring in English. Data for this project was collected during thefirst 15-week term of the school year. The students were assigned three writing
projects with varied topics. The papers went through a three-draft cycle withpeer feedback sessions being conducted on the second and third (final) drafts.
Teacher feedback and assessment was also given on the second and third drafts.
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Peer Review Instruction in the EFL Writing Classroom ■Feedback and assessment was conducted through the use of an analytic rubric
that was used by the teacher and students for all evaluations for the purposes oftransparency and consistency. The rubric consisted of three grade ranges (>80%,70–80% and <70%) and covered three criteria of the papers read: organization,language/accuracy and content. Students were instructed to choose the appropriate grading for each segment of the paper and make a check or, preferably, atext comment. Below that, students could state the perceived strengths and areas
to improve. The rubric also contained a box in which students could assign ahypothetical grade to the paper they read and provided feedback on. This grading
was only done on the final draft and was recorded by the teacher and not shown
the original author. An abbreviated form of the rubric is shown below in Figure 1.
This project then introduced three papers from a previous year’s students.
The papers were anonymous and were simply labelled with the numbers one,
two and three. These three papers were previously graded by the same teacher
as 80, 70 and 85, respectively (A-, B- and A, respectively). These grades were
not shown to the students until after they had conducted their own assessments.
These mock peer review sessions were conducted in the midst of the fourweek cycles of the regular assignments and it was explained in class that their
purpose was to gauge and develop peer review skills. All 27 students weregiven copies of the same paper and a blank copy of the rubric described earlier.
Students shared their hypothetical grades with the teacher, who then averaged theFigure 1>80%
Organization
Language
Content
Score

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70–80%<70%

scores. The original score assigned by the teacher was presented to the students
to compare with the class average. The reasons for the teacher’s scores werethen explained to the students for the purpose of developing peer review skills.

Results
The teacher gave the first paper a score of 80 (A-/B+) while the students’
average score was 77.5. The gap, not being very significant, seems to indicatethat student evaluation is rather similar to the teacher’s. The second paper, givena score of 70 (B-/C+) by the teacher, received an average students score of 78.
This eight-point gap is more significant and could represent a measurable difference between teacher and student evaluation. The third paper received a gradeof 85 (A) from both teacher and the students. This equal result could signify asynthesizing of teacher and student assessment and even an improvement ofstudent evaluations skills. For clarity, the data cited in this paragraph is shown
below in Table 1.

Table 1248

Peer Review Instruction in the EFL Writing Classroom ■Discussion
The results cited above do not show a clear or significant pattern of student
improvement of giving feedback or making evaluations. The first and thirdpapers exhibited similar (or identical) scores from teacher and students, while
the second peer review exercise resulted in the student evaluation being muchhigher (eight points) than the teacher evaluation. Even predicted patterns ofstudents progressing and improving over the term are not borne out by this study.
The reasons for the difference on the second paper are not clear so some
speculation may help. It could be that Japanese students’ general reluctance tocriticize others may have influenced the resulting average. On the other hand,
the issue may be more mechanical in that students lacked the skills to accurately
evaluate their peers’ papers. One of the more obvious issues with this study isthe small sample size of only three data collection points. Another issue hereis the focus solely on quantitative data. Further projects that include qualitative
data from students could exhibit different patterns of student progress, thus
strengthening research similar to this project.

Conclusion
While the results of this project were not particularly conclusive, this does notmean that modelling in peer review is an invalid or pointless exercise. Instead,this project could inspire future researchers to continue to use modelling as aform of peer review instruction. As peer review is a vital part of the writingclassroom, more effective techniques of peer review training can help students
develop the skills needed to assist each other in becoming better writers.

References
Berg, E. C. (1999a). Preparing ESL students for peer response. TESOL Journal 8 (2), 20–25.
Berg, E. C. (1999b). The effects of trained peer response on ESL students’ revision types and writingquality. Journal of Second Language Writing 8 (3), 215–241.
Cote, R. A. (2018). Teaching writing students how to become competent peer reviewers. English249

Teaching Forum, 56 (4), 16–23.
Rollinson, P. (2005). Using peer feedback in the ESL writing class. ELT Journal 59 (1), 23–30.
Wette, R. (2015). Teacher-led collaborative modelling in academic L2 writing courses. ELT Journal,
69 (1), 71–80.

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