VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LƯU NGỌC LY IMPACTS OF PEER REVIEW TRAINING ON FRESHMEN’S PEER FEEDBACK ACTIVITY AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION, ULIS – VNU ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC HƯỚNG DẪN NHẬN XÉT BÀI VIẾT CHO BẠN HỌC TỚI HOẠT ĐỘNG PHẢN HỒI BÀI VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT, KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG ĐHNN, ĐHQG HÀ NỘI M. Combined Programme Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology (ELT) Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LƯU NGỌC LY IMPACTS OF PEER REVIEW TRAINING ON FRESHMEN’S PEER FEEDBACK ACTIVITY AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION, ULIS – VNU ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC HƯỚNG DẪN NHẬN XÉT BÀI VIẾT CHO BẠN HỌC TỚI HOẠT ĐỘNG PHẢN HỒI BÀI VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT, KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG ĐHNN, ĐHQG HÀ NỘI M. Combined Programme Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology (ELT) Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Đinh Hải Yến, M.Ed Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study.
Aims of the study and research questions. Scope of the study. Design of the study. 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Reasons for teaching writing. Approaches to teaching writing. Creative writing approach. Definition of peer review.
Old concept of review. Contemporary concept of review. Benefits of peer revision. Problematic aspects of peer revision.
Ways to create effective peer revision. Creating effective peer revision groups. Peer review training. Rationale for the use of action research.
Context of the study. 23 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The writing course for freshmen at ULIS, VNU. In-class modeling.
Small group conference. Data collection procedure. Data analysis methods. 33 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS.
Results from student writing analysis. Quantity of students‘ comments before and after training. Total number of comments before and after peer review training. Comparison of mistakes made by writers and comments made by peers.
Discussion of research question 1. Quality of students‘ comments before and after training. Comparison between global comments and local comments before and after peer review training. Comparison of the specification of comments before and after training.
Comparison of the relevance of comments before and after training. Discussion of research question 2……………………………………. Results from interviews with students…………………………………. Students‘ reactions to peer review training as reviewers.
Students‘ reactions to peer review training as writers. Discussion of research question 3. Pre-training activities. 61 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Summary and conclusion of the study. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further study. 69 Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 7 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Detailed program of the study.
32 Table 2: Aspects of writing analysis …………………………………….33 Table 3: Number of comments before vs.35 Table 4: Amount of peer comments vs. mistakes students made ………….37 Table 5: Percentage of global and local comments before vs.39 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 8 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: White and Arndt process writing model. 7 Figure 2: Percentage of comments in certain aspects before vs. 40 Figure 3: Comparison of the specification of comments before vs.
42 Figure 4: Relevant comments vs. irrelevant comments before and after training. 44 Figure 5: Relevant comments vs. irrelevant comments before training.
44 Figure 6: Relevant comments vs. irrelevant comments after training…………………….45 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 9 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study: In Vietnam, the teaching of English as a foreign language begins formally from as early as the elementary level up to the tertiary level and is regarded as one of the most important academic subjects at all levels‘ curricula. In teaching English, attention is paid to all four skills in second language acquisition though it is not equal.
Not until reaching tertiary level can students learn writing in a systematic way. From my two year-experience as a university instructor of English, specialized in teaching writing to freshmen at University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (ULIS – VNU), I recognized that the students faced many difficulties in this important subject. To help them overcome those problems, at first, as any novice teachers, I tried my best to correct or give comments to all my students‘ problems in their writing. However, gradually, I recognized that correcting all students‘ mistakes was not a good way to help them as it made them feel demotivated when receiving a corrected version which was full of red ink.
Moreover, when all the problems were identified, students did not think much about them. Therefore, they continued making the same mistakes even though such mistakes had been repeatedly pointed out to them. Various kinds of feedback such as direct feedback, indirect feedback, written feedback, spoken feedback, and focused feedback were applied, but no obvious difference was noticed. In the process of finding a solution to the problem in my writing class, accidentally came to my mind was the notion of ―peer feedback‖ or ―peer response‖ by Rollinson (2005) in his article entitled ―Using peer feedback in the ESL writing class‖.
In his article, he stated that peer feedback has been generally advocated in the literature as ―a potentially valuable aid for its social, cognitive, affective, and methodological benefits‖ (Mendoca and Johnson, 1994, Villamin and de Guerrero, 1996 as cited in Rollinson, 2005, p. However, in applying peer feedback, more problems than benefits were witnessed. The reasons for that have preliminarily LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 10 been identified as the result of students‘ lack of basic knowledge and experience in peer response activity. In order to find a workable solution to the given problem, I have consulted many materials and read many previous studies on the field.
Stanley (1992) suggested training students to be familiar with the genre of their peer‘s writing and using effective communication in peer review. The results of her experiment research revealed that the experimental group made more responses and more types of responses than the control group. Zhu (1995) utilized a small group conference approach in his experiment research to L1 peer responders in freshman composition classes. The researcher came to a conclusion that such peer training brought about significant effects on both the quantity and quality of peer feedback.
Min (2006) carried out a research on peer training to examine the effects of trained peer review on EFL students‘ revision types and quality. The researcher also asserted the positive effects of trained peer review on students‘ feedback. However, the benefits of peer review training on the improvement of students‘ peer feedback and writing quality has never been verified in Vietnamese context. Therefore, with the support in the theory and the urge of finding a practical solution to improve the practice of the peer feedback, I decided to conduct this study on peer review training.
Aims of the study and research questions: The study is designed to investigate the effects of peer review training on the quality of students‘ peer review activity at ULIS – VNU. It aims to achieve three objectives. - To investigate the quantity of students‘ comments to their peer‘s writing before and after peer review training. - To investigate the quality of students‘ comments to their peer‘s writing before and after peer review training.
- To investigate students‘ reactions to peer review training as both writers and reviewers. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims, the research questions of the study are set out as follows. 1) Is there any difference in quantity of students‘ comments to their peer‘s writing before and after peer review training? 2) Is there any difference in quality of students‘ comments to their peer‘s writing before and after peer review training? 3) What are students‘ reactions to peer review training? 3. Scope of the study: Most of first year students, when entering university, are beginners in academic writing and peer review activity, so they have a lot of difficulties and need much help provided by teachers.
One thing teachers can do for their students is the provision of peer review training so that students know how to give comments to their peer‘s writing effectively, from which they can co-learn and improve their own writing. Therefore, the scope of this study is limited to investigating the impacts of peer review training on first year students only. Accordingly, the subjects chosen for this study are first year students at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, ULIS – VNU who finished their first semester at university and are in their second one. Research methodology: To find out the answers to the proposed research questions within the scope of the study, the main research method employed in this study is an action research whose intervention was in the form of discussion, in-class modeling as suggested by Min (2005) and small group conference as adapted from Zhu (1995).
Participants were a class of 18 students where the researcher worked as a writing teacher. In order to collect sufficient data to fully address the three given research questions, this study utilized two data collection instruments. The first instrument is writing analysis. The data for LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 analysis were students‘ portfolios turned in by the end of the semester with their two essays before peer review training and two essays written consecutively after training.
The second instrument is interview. The interviews with open-ended questions about the peer review training were informally conducted with all the participants after training in order for them to fully express their opinions about the peer review training. For student writing, analysis was concerned with the quantity and quality of students‘ comments to their peer‘s writing in the essays prior to peer review training and the essays post peer review training. The data collected from the interviews were categorized to find the main areas of concern among participants as writers and reviewers as well.
Design of the study: The study is comprised of three parts. Part A - Introduction provides a brief introduction of the study. Part B– Development which is the main part is divided into 3 chapters. Chapter 1 – Literature review reviews the literature relevant to the study including aspects of teaching writing and peer revision.
Chapter 2 – Methodology is a detailed discussion of the method used in the study encompassing the justification for using action research, the context of the study, the intervention, data collection instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis methods. Chapter 3 – Results, Discussion and Implications presents significant findings of the study, a discussion of the major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived. Part C – Conclusion summarizes the main issues addressed in the study. Some limitations of the study that serve as the basis for the researcher‘s suggestions for further study were also pointed out in this part.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 13 PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides the theoretical background for the study. It covers theories related to teaching writing and peer revision. Teaching writing Reasons for teaching writing: Human beings learn other languages beside their mother tongue with the ultimate purpose of communication. Communication can happen orally or in written form.
However, according to Raimes (1983, p. 3), the fact that people have to communicate in the written form is not the only reason for the existence of writing as the essential part of second language learning.