Promoted Peer Review in EFL Writing: Development in Students’ Perceptions and Feedback

Abstract

While many studies have examined the impact of peer review on EFL students’ perceptions of peer review and acceptance and incorporation of feedback in their writing with the help of training or guidance and guide (check list), using a combination of these techniques plus multiplicity of review sessions, as a promotion, has been underexplored. This study aims to investigate the usefulness of training, guidance, and multiplicity of peer review sessions in changing students’ negative perceptions of peer review and increasing their acceptance and incorporation of feedback in EFL writing. Two training workshops and checklists were used to help students do the review, which was accomplished in five multiple sessions. Thirty-four students voluntarily participated in this study, which employed a five-item pre-/post methodology—the online survey and students’ written drafts as data collection instruments. To analyze the data, independent samples t-tests were used for the five-item survey, percentage of each peer session’s comments (i.e., comments made/comments incorporated) was calculated to assess peers’ acceptance of their partners’ feedback, and a repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to determine whether participants incorporated more feedback over time. The results showed that, first, the participants revealed positive perceptions of the effectiveness of peer review. Second, the students highly accepted their peers’ feedback. Finally, the students incorporated a significantly higher quantity of reviewers’ feedback into second drafts at the end of every session, starting from the second session. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.