Do Secondary L2 Writers Benefit from Peer Comments?

“…university ESL students' first drafts and revised drafts and found that text-specific teacher comments in the form of marginal notes, teacher comments that requested information and clarification, and teacher comments on grammar appeared to induce the most substantive revision (see Ferris, 1997).”

“Tsui & Ng (2000) found that Hong Kong secondary students viewed the teacher as a ‘figure of authority that guaranteed quality’ (p. 149) and were reluctant to trust their peers.”

“…about how to manage the provision of feedback in a way more consistent with process approaches, so that students receive feedback on drafts before submitting final products (e.g. Tribble, 1996; White & Arndt, 1991) in ways that are consistent with the time available to staff and the class size.”

“Tsui and Ng (2000) found that teacher feedback was more often incorporated in revisions than peer comments when students received both peer and teacher comments.”

“%) and those reported in the literature (Chou, 1999; Connor & Asenavage, 1994; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Paulus, 1999; Tang & Tithecott, 1999; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“E-mail address: minhuitz@mail.ncku.edu.tw.”

“For example, Tsui and Ng (2000) found that students perceived teacher and peer feedback as helpful if it provided specific and elaborated revision suggestions.”

“These feedback processes include students taking different perspectives, comparing others’ work to their own and the assimilation of new knowledge, which can be coherently referred to as reflective knowledge building (e.g. van Popta et al. 2017; Tsui and Ng 2000).”

“In line with college ESL/EFL learners, Tsui and Ng (2000) observed that the secondary ESL learners in their study also used more teacher than peer feedback in their redrafts.”

“…power distance, the concept of ‘face’, and interpersonal harmony) which is found to exert negative influence on students’ engagement with or participation in peer feedback (Carson & Nelson 1994, 1996; Nelson & Carson 1998; Hyland 2000; Tsui & Ng 2000, 2010; Hu & Lam 2010; Yu, Lee & Mak 2016).”

“2) encourage students to approach writing as a socially constructed, meaning-making process (Tuzi, 2004) and develop productive attitudes toward writing (Stanley, 1992); 3) raise students’ awareness of their strengths and weaknesses as L2 writers (Tsui and Ng, 2000; Tuzi, 2004), foster ‘an awareness of the rhetorical…”

“Through responding to students’ and teachers’ needs, she formulated a prototype of a writing cycle which she subsequently researched (see Tsui, 2003 ; Tsui & Ng, 2000 ).”

“In addition, it is suggested that compared with teacher feedback, peer feedback can be more informative because L2 student writers can understand each other better (Chaudron 1984; Lockhart and Ng 1993; Paulus 1999) and is more likely to be given careful consideration in student writers' revision decisions, rather than…”

“…since 1990 as a means to encourage students to provide feedback on their peers’ drafts for improving their writing (Berg, 1999; Carson & Nelson, 1996; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Min, 2006; Nelson & Murphy, 1992; Paulus, 1999; Sengupta, 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000; Villamil & Guerrero, 1996, 1998).”

“In contrast, previous studies of L2English students noted skepticism of the value of feedback from other students and that greater gains are made from teacher feedback than from peer feedback (see, e.g., Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“Peer response promotes a sense of audience, increases ownership of text, facilitates learners' awareness of own strengths and weaknesses, as well as encourages collaborative learning (Tsui & Ng, 2000 ).”

“…some of the previous studies (Chou, 1999; Leki, 1990; Lockhart & Ng, 1993; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Nelson & Carson, 1998; Nelson & Murphy, 1993; Tsui & Ng, 2000) have shown, the present study maintains that students can provide effective feedback, provided that they go through carefully…”

“Previous research on peer and teacher feedback in first language writing education identifies the beneficial effects of peer comments and proves them to be of equal or even greater effect than teacher comments (Tsui & Ng, 2000 ).”

“Most language writing programs are implemented in junior high school (Tsui & Ng, 2000) or high school (Ferris, Pezone, Tade, & Tinti, 1997).”

“L2 research has shown that peer response can increase chances for meaning negotiation and language practice (Lockhart & Ng, 1995; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994), encourage collaborative reading and writing ( Tsui & Ng, 2000 ), and promote writing revisions (Berg, 1999; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Min, 2006, 2008; Stanley, 19…”

“…feedback or making revisions, many studies have not-surprisingly found that students who receive more feedback will then implement more changes based on this feedback (Path 4; Beason, 1993; Berggren, 2015; Nelson & Schunn, 2009; Patchan et al., 2016; Tsui & Ng, 2000; Wichmann et al., 2018).”

“…the current literature in support of the usefulness of peer review activities is inevitably undermined by some empirical evidence indicating a low ratio of incorporation of peer feedback into students’ subsequent revisions (Miao, Badger, & Zhen, 2006; Min, 2006; Paulus, 1999; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“In EFL contexts, the limited L2 proficiency and writing knowledge of students (e.g. low-proficiency students in small group work) may prevent them from providing constructive and sophisticated comments on peers’ writing (Hu and Lam 2010; Hyland and Hyland 2006; Tsui and Ng 2000).”

“Even though the application of this activity has been found beneficial for learning and it provides a persuasive argument in favour of writing dyads/groups, there are some reservations among L2 researchers and practitioners (Nelson & Carson, 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“While there is a considerable variation between individual participants in the amount of feedback incorporated (Tsui & Ng, 2000), our study is in line with the general findings that students are selective about incorporating feedback into their revised drafts, with roughly half (54”

“…. concluded that the two types of feedback play complementary roles and this is supported in the Hong Kong upper-secondary context by the findings of Tsui & Ng (2000) who used both quantitative and qualitative approaches over a period of three months to investigate the roles of teacher and peer…”

“The instructor/researcher adapted and modified the “writing cycle” (Tsui & Ng, 2000) in designing this class of Academic Writing.”

“The finding that students tend to value expert opinions more than those of novices is consistent with previous studies in Hong Kong (Sengupta 1998; Tsui and Ng 2000) and in New Zealand (Peterson and Irving 2008).”

“In the EFL writing classroom, however, students still tend to believe that it is mainly the teacher’s job to respond to students’ writing (Sengupta, 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“A number of researchers, such as Tsui and Ng ( 2000 ), have also recommended peer review as a collaborative activity to secure immediate textual improvement and, in the long run, to develop writing competence through mutual scaffolding.”

“In this respect, a technique that has received great attention over the last two decades is peer reviewing (Fox, 1980; Holt, 1992; Mangelsdorf, 1992; Mittan, 1989; Soares, 2004; Tsui & Ng, 2000; McMurry, 2004; Mukundan & Nimehchisalem, 2011; etc).”

“…studies have in general followed a writer/reviewer/ comment-centric perspective, focusing on the features of comments as a whole and the effects of the reviewing process (Tsui and Ng 2000; Lundstrom and Baker 2009; Cho and Cho 2011; Zhao 2014; Berggren 2015; Walker 2015; Huisman et al. 2018).”

“For example, in their comparative study, Scott, Bell, and McCallum (2009) found that students who were less positive about L2 learning performed more poorly than those who were more positive even though both groups of the students wanted to learn the target language well.”

“The study by Tsui & Ng (2000) demonstrated that students valued both teacher and peer feedback and more than 90% of the students made use of considerable teacher and peer feedback in their revision.”

“…of second language writing usually operationalizes the construct of ‘‘authentic audience’’ through feedback provided by ‘‘peers’’ (Rollinson, 2005; Tsui & Ng, 2000) or ‘‘teacher’’ (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1994) or ‘‘both’’ (Paulus, 1999), studies using native English speakers outside the class…”

“…devote attention to vocabulary and grammar problems prior to commenting on global issues such as organization, flow of ideas, or clarity of contents, whereas students in the studies (e.g., Suzuki, 2008; Tsui & Ng, 2000) are likely to bring content and idea development into principal focus.”

“Tsui and Ng (2000) found that most learners paid attention to less than 50% of peer feedback received but more than 50% of teacher feedback received.”

“Several studies have discussed the benefits of the peer review process in an EFL setting (see, for example, Berg, 1999; Hu, 2005; Min, 2006; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“Some studies found that peer feedback had a positive effect on students’ writing self-efficacy (Chaudron, 1984; Tsui and Ng, 2000; Lee and Evans, 2019).”

“Regardless of the low inter-rater reliability in large-scale portfolio scoring, this problem can be overcome when PA is used at the classroom level via the construction of well-defined rubrics and the control of portfolio contents (Weigle 2002). The use of formative feedback during the portfolio process can validate w…”

“It is most widespread in academic writing and ESL classrooms, where it has been repeatedly shown to be more ef.cient than either self-revision or teacher feedback [Topping 1998; Tsui and Ng 2000].”

“This result corroborates a number of studies which show that EFL/ESL students tend to make changes at local level (Bitchener & Ferris, 2012; Chang, 2012; Jiang & Wang, 2013; Liu & Sadler, 2003; Nelson & Carson, 1998; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“Students are more willing to accept feedback from an expert (Tsui and Ng 2000; Yang, Badger, and Yu 2006; Kaufman and Schunn 2011), and lower ability students may provide less feedback (Nesbit and Burton 2006; Patchan and Schunn 2015).”

“Given students’ reservations about peer language revisions (Mendoca & Johnson, 1994; Tsui & Ng, 2000), a division-oflabour approach may afford limited learning opportunity for language learners.”

“…of the importance of the quality of writing will be raised, and it can also add peer evaluation in the learning processes and enhance learners ’ sense of audience in writing, all of which are conducive to e ff ective learning according to the literature (e.g. Tsui and Ng 2000; Zou and Xie 2018).”

“In the domain of (academic) writing and revision, students prefer expert or teacher feedback (Kwok 2008; Lockhart and Ng 1993; Zhang 1995) and perceive peer feedback as helpful and welcome to improve their writing (Kwok 2008; Tsui and Ng 2000) but are simultaneously concerned about their own and their peers’ ability t…”

“Tsui and Ng(2000) , through their work, claimed that peer comments could contribute positively to secondary L2 (second language) writers’ writing process.”

“…Paulus, 1999; Villamil & De Guerrero, 1998), the behavior of incorporating peer comments in revision (Connor & Asenavage, 1994; Mendonça & Johnson, 1994; Nelson & Murphy, 1993), and the enhanced sense of audience and ownership of text (Carson & Nelson, 1994; Mangelsdorf, 1992; Tsui & Ng, 2000).”

“Tutors tend to provide corrective feedback, which can be traced to the social–cultural factors that teachers in China are regarded as authorities (see also Tsui and Ng 2000 ) and would be willing to give students corrective feedback in the ways described in the tutor interviews.”