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Peer Feedback in L2 Writing

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Classroom Writing Assessment and Feedback in L2 School Contexts

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Abstract

Peer feedback has a pivotal role to play in the writing classroom, especially in classroom assessment that serves the purpose of improving student learning and empowering students to become autonomous and self-regulated learners (i.e., assessment for/as learning – AfL/AaL). In the literature, “peer feedback” is often used synonymously with related terms such as peer response, peer review, peer evaluation, peer editing, and peer assessment. In this chapter, I draw on the work of Liu and Hansen (2002) and define peer feedback as “the use of learners as sources of information and interactants for each other in such a way that learners assume roles and responsibilities … in commenting on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both written and oral formats in the process of writing” (p. 1). Specifically, the focus of peer feedback is on the “communication process through which learners enter into dialogues related to performance and standards” (Liu and Carless 2006, p. 280). One major focus of peer feedback is, therefore, on the role of the learners, as well as the process through which they communicate ideas about “the amount, level, value, worth, quality of success of the products or outcomes of learning of peers of similar status” (Topping 1998, p. 250). While peer feedback is a process, it is also a product (Chang 2016) – as it also refers to the tangible feedback provided by peers on various aspects of writing, in the form of error feedback and/or commentary on content, organization, and other aspects of writing, be it in the oral, written, or computer-mediated mode.

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  1. Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Icy Lee

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Lee, I. (2017). Peer Feedback in L2 Writing. In: Classroom Writing Assessment and Feedback in L2 School Contexts. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3924-9_7

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