In the spring 2015 semester, I taught an intermediate, intensive English (IE) writing class to students from China, Korea, and Jordan at a private university in the United States. The semester was divided into two 7-week sessions. The learning objectives of the first 7 weeks were to examine paragraph writing and its important elements (the introduction, body, and conclusion) and also to examine the different types of paragraphs (e.g., descriptive and comparison/contrast paragraphs). In the next 7 weeks, the course transitioned into the analysis and writing of essays, and by the end of the course, the students would be able to produce well-structured and supported five-paragraph essays.

After students finished a draft of their first paragraph, I announced that we would now begin peer review. In a loud chorus the students moaned, which caught me by surprise as this was the first writing class for students in our program. One semester later, a Chinese student from this class told another writing instructor and me that Chinese students are highly competitive with each other, and they do not like activities that involve teamwork. Another possible reason for their negative response I found aligns with Rollinson (2005), who pointed out that

many students may need a significant amount of initial persuasion of the value of peer feedback, since they may not easily accept the idea that their peers are qualified to act as substitutes for the teacher, and critique their writing (p. 26).

Whether the students were accustomed to the teacher providing correction and feedback or they were competing with each other, the students’ moaning led me to think more about the usefulness of peer review.

Diagnosing the Problem

My initial insight into the students’ resounding complaint about peer editing was simple: They were not interested in doing it. Their verbal complaints and hastiness in doing the peer editing activities sent me a clear message that it was not working. At that time, I was reading about differentiated learning, and I decided to differentiate the writing process for these students and focus on what the students wanted to do. They had responded well to teacher-directed editing and guided self-editing for their first paragraph. We had done these editing activities before reaching the peer response stage. I had also compiled common grammatical and mechanical errors from their drafts, and we corrected the mistakes together. These teacher-directed activities were successful because they were familiar with the teacher lecturing and answering questions in their culture; the teacher provides them with everything they need to know (Huang, 2009).

Another factor that I had neglected was that certain cultures might feel uncomfortable with peer review. For example, the Chinese students in Carson and Nelson’s (1996) study avoided giving critical comments on their peers’ writing because they wanted to either preserve group harmony or not appear more knowledgeable; critiquing their peers’ writing might present a threat to their friendly interaction. Carson and Nelson added that writing groups are frequently implemented in composition classrooms in the United States and more often function “for the benefit of the individual writer than for the benefit of the group” (p. 2). More recently, Huang (2009) examined how the Chinese educational system, which has been molded around economic development and social progress, has created a sense of individuality that does not encourage working together in groups. Huang’s description seems to corroborate what the Chinese student from the writing class told us about Chinese students’ dislike of peer editing: They were in competition with each other, not in collaboration.

In my class, there were four newly arrived Chinese students and two Korean students who had been in the United States for over a year. In the second 7-week session, there were six new Chinese students, one Korean student, and one new Arabic-speaking student. The Chinese students’ and even the Korean students’ aversion to peer response could have been due to these cultural mores of group harmony or, more recently, competitiveness. As Hansen and Liu (2005) suggested, it is important to discuss with students their prior experiences with peer response and group work beforehand. By inviting them to reflect on their own experiences, cultural norms, and perceptions of peer response and group work, teachers can facilitate an understanding of the students’ concerns and attitudes toward these activities and lead to a discussion of their expectations for interaction and norms in the classroom. Not having been successful in implementing peer response with my students, I had tried differentiating the writing process for them and decided to attempt it again.

Implementing Peer Response

Consequently, my next teaching strategy was to gradually introduce peer review activities to the students. By introducing peer review in small doses, I anticipated that they would begin to see the benefits in their writing. Wang (2009) reminded us of the advantages of peer review: “It helps develop and reinforce students' writing skills and critical thinking abilities, it enhances language learning, and it provides opportunities for students to practice their abilities of social interaction” (p. 38). Another advantage is that it offers students the chance to read authentic texts written by their peers. With these skills in mind, I prepared simple peer response sheets with yes/no questions, an editing checklist, and open-ended questions for the students to use in pair work. What I observed this time was that the students did the editing, but they hurried through it, and it was cursory at best. Even with the open-ended questions, they provided sparse comments and often they did not write anything at all. Not surprisingly, Berg (1999) stated:

Whether in grade or high school, adult education, or university-level writing courses, ESL students are not likely to be experienced peer respondents. Nonetheless, these students are often asked to participate in the complex peer response task without adequate preparation. As a result of such lack of preparation, the peer response activity is often an unsatisfactory experience for the students and a frustrating one for teachers. (p. 20)

By the end of second spring session, I was feeling frustrated with the peer response activities. Even though the students were writing coherent paragraphs and had improved their grammar, they had not fully reaped the advantages of peer response that Wang (2009) describes, namely, the development of critical thinking skills, enhancement of language learning, and social interaction. I ruminated over this problem some more.

Revamping Peer Review

Berg (1999), Hansen and Liu (2005), and Rollinson (2005) provide a set of guidelines for preparing students for peer response, which I found helpful to inform my practice. The authors stated that in the pre-training stage, the teacher creates a comfortable atmosphere in which trust is established among the students so that collaboration for pair and group work can be facilitated. The instructor plans when peer response will be introduced in the writing process and establishes the role of peer response (Berg, 1999; Hansen & Liu, 2005; Rollinson, 2005). Early in the term it is crucial to discuss students’ prior experiences with peer response and group work in order to make adjustments as needed (Hansen & Liu, 2005). The instructor selects the mode of peer response (e.g., oral, written, computer-mediated) and creates peer response worksheets (Hansen & Liu, 2005).

In sum, I realized that I need to spend more time training the students for peer review and also thinking about how to bridge their previous learning experience to my second language writing class. In the training stage, teachers can show students sample drafts of their own writing with comments from colleagues. As Berg (1999) noted, “In this way, teachers can illustrate the progression from first to last draft” (p. 22). Next, teachers can model peer review with sample anonymous student drafts (Berg, 1999) and video tutorials posted on YouTube to train the students in how to do peer review. Together with the class, instructors can emphasize revising aspects of clarity, organization, and unity rather than sentence-level errors. Instructors must also demonstrate how students can provide a balance of both positive and constructive criticism. All of these guidelines made a big impact on how I changed my approach peer editing in my writing class.

References

Berg, E. C. (1999). Preparing ESL students for peer response. TESOL Journal, 8(2), 20–25.

Carson, J., & Nelson, G. (1996). Chinese students’ perceptions of ESL peer response group interaction. Journal of Second Language Writing. 5(1), 1–19.

Hansen, J. G., & Liu, J. (2005). Guiding principles for effective peer response. ELT Journal, 59(1), 31–38.

Huang, P. (2009). The Chinese educational system and its effects on student’s behavior in the work environment. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/phuang2505/the-chinese-educational-system-and-its-affect-on-students-behavior-in-the-work-environment.

Rollinson, P. (2005). Using peer feedback in the ESL writing class. ELT Journal, 59(1), 23–30.

Wang, L. (2009). Chinese students’ perceptions of the practice of peer review in an integrated class at the university level. TESL Reporter, 42(2), 35–56.

Fernanda Capraro received a PhD from Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States. She currently teaches in the ESOL program at Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio. She previously taught intensive English and spoken English courses in the United States.