The effectiveness of peer feedback on graduate academic writing at Ho Chi Minh City Open University

Abstract

On thorough examination and analysis of English writing and comments by TESOL graduate students of Ho Chi Minh City Open University (HCMC OU), this study aims to address a useful instructional activity in teaching academic writing: employing peer feedback for revision processes. Data for analysis were collected from 37 students who have been in the first phase of Master Program in TESOL at HCMC OU. During a fifteen - week Academic Writing Course, the students were asked to write different types of paragraphs and essays, working in groups to provide comments on their peers’ writing. The descriptive statistics has shown that students produce more feedback on local areas than on global areas. The four most frequent types of comments belong to alteration, clarification, suggestion and explanation. By comparing the participants’ drafts and revised essays, the study can confirm the correlation between peer feedback and students’ effective writing revision. A high percentage of recorded mistakes in the participants’ 1st drafts had been successfully corrected. Those positive results of the research have yielded a fresh insight into the deployment of peer feedback in teaching academic writing, especially at graduate level.