Peer Review, Collaborative Revision, and Genre in L2 Writing
Memari Hanjani, Alireza
Date: 12 March 2013
Publisher
University of Exeter
Degree Title
PhD in Education
Abstract
During the last few decades peer collaboration has been commonly practised in Second
Language (L2) writing classrooms. Despite the conceptual shift towards process,
student-centred orientation to writing pedagogy, there are still many L2 composition
courses around the world which consider writing as a finished product and assign ...
During the last few decades peer collaboration has been commonly practised in Second
Language (L2) writing classrooms. Despite the conceptual shift towards process,
student-centred orientation to writing pedagogy, there are still many L2 composition
courses around the world which consider writing as a finished product and assign a
central role to writing instructors. This qualitative case study research is one of the first
attempts which have been set out to probe the interactional dynamics, revision
behaviours, writing performance, and perceptions of Iranian English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) students engaged in peer review and collaborative revision activities in
two genres, process and argumentation, in light of sociocultural perspective of learning.
The participants were 5 lower intermediate to intermediate English translation student
dyads enrolled in a semester long essay writing course. Drawing on the data collected
from audio-recordings, observations, written texts, and interviews, the study
investigated how this group of L2 learners approached these two distinct tasks, how
they reacted to the feedback they received either from their partners or teacher, how
they used the comments to improve their writing performance, and how they viewed
each of the tasks they were involved in. Analysis of audio-recorded data revealed that
students stayed on task for most of the allocated time and employed three distinct
dyadic negotiations; evaluative, social, and procedural with both partners being capable
of pooling ideas and providing each other scaffolded help regardless of their level of L2
writing proficiency. However, the majority of conversations and scaffolding
concentrated on surface level features of compositions. Further, examination of written
texts produced by students during writing cycles demonstrated that they incorporated
higher number of teacher‟s comments into their subsequent drafts than their peers‟
feedback and collaborative revision contributed to greater degree of improvement in the
quality of the essays they developed compared to peer reviewing. Retrospective
interviews also indicated that collaborative tasks were generally perceived as useful, yet
the participants expressed scepticism about the validity of peer comments and did not
feel competent enough to address their partners‟ papers. Nevertheless, they showed
more favourable reactions towards collaborative revision activity than peer reviewing.
The researcher concludes that collaborative revision can be used as an interim activity
for the move from the traditional, product-based, teacher fronted L2 writing pedagogy
to a more theoretically sound, process-based, student fronted approach to writing
instruction in EFL contexts.
Doctoral Theses
Doctoral College
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