Author: Chen, Haitao
Title: Investigating Chinese university students' engagement with peer feedback in EFL writing from a socio-cognitive perspective
Advisors: Hu, Guangwei (ENGL)
Degree: DALS
Year: 2023
Subject: English language -- Composition and exercises -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Academic writing -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Feedback (Psychology)
Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations
Department: Faculty of Humanities
Pages: xix, 256 pages : color illustrations
Language: English
Abstract: Similar to other types of feedback, peer feedback is useless without active engagement. Apart from a small number of studies targeted at students’ engagement, most of the extant research on peer feedback merely touched upon students’ engagement with peer feedback. This means that much of students’ engagement with peer feedback remains to be investigated, including factors shaping such engagement. Moreover, nearly all those studies on peer feedback were conducted only from the perspective of students as feedback receivers. It should be noted that students go through two processes in peer feedback, i.e., commenting on their peers’ writing and responding to peers’ comments in the revisions of their own writing. Thus, this study investigated students’ engagement with peer feedback from two complementary perspectives focusing: their role as feedback givers and their role as feedback receivers.
Based on a socio-cognitive approach integrating multiple social and cognitive theories, this study proposed an integrated theoretical framework of students’ engagement with peer feedback. In response to the hypothesized relationships and the research gaps identified, a convergent parallel mixed-methods design was adopted for this study. Such a research design, consisting of a multi-case study and an experiment, aimed to provide data from multiple sources including stimulated recalls, writing drafts, pre- and post-intervention questionnaire surveys, and pre- and post-intervention writing tests. These data were then analyzed to answer the research questions formulated in this study.
The findings show that students were behaviorally, cognitively and affectively engaged with peer feedback. It was also found that the three dimensions of their engagement were correlated with one another. Besides, it was revealed that students’ English proficiency and their pairing conditions impacted on their engagement with peer feedback and their writing abilities. Moreover, students’ engagement with peer feedback was found to be linked to their writing abilities, providing further evidence that students’ engagement with peer feedback impacted on their writing abilities. The patterns of relationships observed suggested that students’ English proficiency and their pairing conditions impacted on their writing abilities through their engagement with peer feedback.
The study has thus made important contributions by adding to our understanding of students’ engagement with peer feedback, integrating multiple social and cognitive theories into the socio-cognitive perspective adopted, developing an integrated theoretical framework, realizing the methodological affordances from the mixed-methods research design for research on students’ engagement with peer feedback, and providing pedagogical implications for EFL writing teaching in similar contexts.
Rights: All rights reserved
Access: restricted access

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/12733