The perceived effectiveness of written peer feedback comments within L2 English academic writing courses Cover Image

The perceived effectiveness of written peer feedback comments within L2 English academic writing courses
The perceived effectiveness of written peer feedback comments within L2 English academic writing courses

Author(s): Roger Michael Alan Yallop, Djuddah A. J. Leijen
Subject(s): Foreign languages learning, Language acquisition, Pragmatics, Higher Education , Philology
Published by: Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühing (ERÜ)
Keywords: language learning and teaching; EFL and ESL writing; L1 Estonian; revision comments; non-revision comments; hedging devices; PhD students; cover letters; writing groups; peer review;

Summary/Abstract: At one Estonian university, we have designed a course to support the writing skills of doctorate students who need to write scientific articles for publication in their L2 English. We provide this support by placing these students into small discipline-specific writing groups where they periodically give and receive written feedback on their draft articles. Knowing what may constitute an effective feedback comment will enable us to improve upon current pedagogical practices. In this study, we develop a coding scheme to measure the impact of both affective and non-affective feedback comments on the peer feedback process. We use this scheme in tandem with questionnaires to assess the effectiveness of postgraduate peer feedback comments as perceived by both L1 Estonian doctoral students and expert writing assessors. Within this context, the results suggest that cover letters and the tone of feedback comments have a noticeable impact on the peer feedback process.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 14
  • Page Range: 247-271
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: English