Literature Review on Feedback in EFL Writing: Teacher Feedback and Peer Feedback
摘要：写作是一种重要的语言技巧，相比较听力、口语和阅读，写作更能全面的展现学习者的语言精准水平。所以我们需要对英语写作的教与学投入更多的精力。然而我们当前的大学英语写作教学收效并非显著。一方面，老师花费大量的精力和时间去阅读和修改学生的英语写作，但成效颇低；另一方面，学生只是表面肤浅的理解老师的建议及评语或者甚至直接忽视老师给予的纠错反馈。在一定程度上来看，造成这种现象的原因可以追溯到结果教学法在英语写作教学中的广泛应用而带来的影响。结果教学法把英语写作过程看成是一个线性的活动，在这一过程中没有课堂活动部分，没有互动。而与之相对应的过程教学法把写作看成是一个复杂的、相互重叠的认知过程，在这个过程中有学生的积极参与。反馈作为过程教学法的重要组成部分而引起广泛的关注，它包括：教师反馈、同伴反馈、自我反馈和计算机辅助反馈。其中，教师反馈和同伴反馈是其主要的两大部分。在二语学习环境下关于这两种反馈效果的研究很多，但研究结果有所不同，有的研究者认为教师反馈的效果更佳而有的研究更倾向于在写作中使用同伴反馈。在以往的研究中，研究者们大多只侧重于其中一种反馈方式在大学英语写作教学中的应用，而将两者教学方法结合起来应用的研究不是很多。因此，本研究尝试将两种反馈应用到大学英语写作教学中并期待通过实证研究能够在不久将来证实其可行性和效度。
关键字：反馈；教师反馈；同伴反馈；外语写作
Abstract: As an important language skill, writing can comprehensively present the learners’ language proficiency compared with other basic skills such as listening, speaking and reading. Therefore, much attention should be paid to the teaching and learning of English writing. However, at present time, our college English writing instruction seems unsatisfactory. On the one hand, teachers contribute a great deal of time and energy to reading and correcting student’s composition but with low efficiency; on the other hand, students spend less time superficially understanding teacher’s suggestions and comments or even directly neglect teacher’s error correction. To a certain extent, this current situation can be traced back to the prevailing traditional product-oriented approach which assumes writing as a liner process, in which there is no students’ interaction within writing activities. On the contrary, the process-oriented approach assumes writing as a cognitive process, with which students can actively participant in writing activities. Feedback, an indispensable part of process-oriented approach of writing, has attracted great attention, which mainly encompasses teacher feedback and peer feedback. In ESL context, many stu
dies on the effects of two types of feedback has been done. Nevertheless, the results of them varied greatly in these studies. Some scholars reviewed that teacher feedback is more favorable in writing class while others prefer to use peer feedback. Up to now, most of the researchers just focus on either peer feedback or teacher feedback, and few researchers have combined the two kinds of feedback in the context of the EFL writing. Hence, the study attempts to apply peer feedback and teacher feedback into EFL writing through an empirical study and look forward to its feasibility and effectiveness will be approved in the near further study in writing pedagogy.
Keywords: feedback; teacher feedback; peer feedback; EFL writing
1. Introduction
    Feedback plays a prominent role in improving student’s learning ability and strengthening his or her learning achievement in language pedagogy. In writing, feedback refers to “reader’s comprehensible input from author whose function is offering information to reader to modify composition” (Zhu, 2010). The efficiency of writing feedback will directly
affect students’ writing level as well as reflecting the effectiveness of teacher’s writing strategies. Feedback in EFL writing mainly focus on: teacher feedback; peer feedback; self-feedback and computer-generated feedback. From which teacher feedback refers to the input provided by the teacher for the revision of students’ writings or assessment of learning performance (Keh, 1990) and peer feedback is defined as a system in which individuals evaluate counterparts’ or peers’ achievements of language learning including writing and reading (Topping, 1998). Teacher feedback plays a dominant role in L2 writing, while in recent years teacher feedback was given great attention through the popularity of process writing approach. Domestic and foreign scholars have already conducted a great deal of empirical research on teacher and peer feedback, but have not reached a consensus on the effectiveness and the ranges, methods and strategies of application. And many researches paid attention to the single study on different modes of feedback as well as focusing less on the comparative study of the efficiency, merits and demerits of integrating teacher feedback and peer feedback. Based on which this study will explore the effectiveness of combining teacher feedback and peer feedback and look forward to providing practically and significantly instructional feedback in EFL writing.
2. Related Studies of Teacher Feedback and Peer Feedback at Home and Abroad
    The study of writing feedback began in the 1950s. The scholars made a comparison between teacher’s error correction and peer’s error correction with the guidance of teachers, the results of which examined that the efficiency of the latter is better than the former one. In the following 60 years, domestic and international scholars made a detail study on the practical effectiveness of peer feedback (Keh, 1990; Ferris, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2006; Paulus, 1999; Tsui & Ng, 2000; Ming, 2005; Liu, 2002; Gong, 2007; Meng, 2009; Wang, 2010; Xu, 2010; Guo, 2011; Hu & Zhang, 2011). These researchers stated that singly using teacher feedback will not truly and efficiently improve students’ writing ability. “Teachers often spend a great deal of time and energy in modifying composition and putting forward many comments and suggestions on writing, however, students always neglect teachers’ correction comments as well as superficially understand the correction suggestions. This kind of single and passive feedback have no effect on stimulating student’s learning interests and enthusiasm” (Zhou, 2013: 121). On the contrary, peer feedback attracted more attention to scholars and teachers. They found that in the process
of face-to-face communication, negotiation and discussion, peer feedback can mutually, actively and accurately state what students want to express. Meanwhile, student’s self-learning ability and collaborative spirit could be exerted to the utmost as well as writing and thought ability being exerted to a higher extent. 
    Some other studies investigated the essence of teachers’ feedback behaviors (Connors & Lunsford 1993: 200-223; Ferris, 1997: 315-339; ); the effectiveness of feedback types (Ferris & Roberts, 2001: 161-184; Kepner, 1991: 305-313); students’ perceptions of feedback (Cohen & Cavalcanti, 1990: 155-177; Hedgocock & Left-kowtz, 1994: 141-165). Totally, students generally considered that peer feedback is much more effective than teacher feedback. In terms of teacher feedback, domestic researches focused more on the importance and values of student’s recognition process and its development (Zhang et al., 2000: 24-28; Xie, 2011: 50-51); and its efficiency in improving student’s attention and their ability (Li & Wu, 2005; Bei, 2009); and its influences on the accuracy, fluency and complexity of student’s writing (Wang & Liu, 2012: 49-53); or even the effectiveness of different types of teacher feedback and correction and teachers’ and students’ attitudes tow
ards teacher feedback (Wang, 2006: 24-30; Zhang & Liu, 2010: 115-118). These studies just singly focused on different aspects of teacher feedback, there are less studies on the combination of peer feedback and teacher feedback and explanation of theirs reliability and efficiency in EFL writing.
    In recent writing instruction, peer feedback (Richards et al., 2005: 128) refers to “the activity in the process of composition modifying and in this activity where students read peers’ composition in groups and then make comments and suggestions on them”. International writing researches firmed the application of peer feedback in ESL writing (Hansen & Liu, 2005: 31-38; Jacobs et al., 1998: 301-317 ). Also many scholars conducted researches from the perspective of cognition, who put forward that peer feedback could cultivate student’s analytic ability and expand their thinking space (Paulus, 1999: 265-289). In addition, students could also communicate with peers and improve the ability of using target language in specific communicative contexts (Hansen, 2005: 31-38). However, the researchers pointed out that although peer feedback could make up drawbacks for teacher feedback, its accuracy, reliability and efficiency are being questioned and the practical oper
scholars
ation is needed to be explored further.

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