By implementing peer writing groups, teachers encourage students to give, seek, and react to oral feedback among themselves as they write, in addition to reacting to the teacher's traditional comments on finished papers. This trend raises the interesting question of what effect peer feedback has on students' revision practices. Respected teachers and writing theorists have fostered peer groups in high school and college classrooms as a way to encourage students to write and revise. It should be noted that teachers sometimes have peer groups respond in writing to written drafts from their fellow students. Research indicates that students writing without reactions from a writing group often do not anticipate an audience.
Some reports support the use of writing groups for encouraging revision.
The study concluded that the development of a peer community fostered growth from egocentrism to audience awareness and that knowing the audience helped students become more aware of possible strategies for revising the written message. Early in the semester, students' comments were primarily positive, but included some criticisms of content and form. The writers, however, did not always revise accordingly to the reactions of their peers, and sometimes resented the criticisms. Later in the semester, however, advice from peers was more likely to be heeded because rather than more general criticisms, the students offered each other concrete suggestions for revision. Not all the studies of peer reaction show unqualified positive effects on revision, however.