Feedback revisited : The impact of peer commentary on students’ attitudes and writing performance in the EFL classroom

Abstract EN

The aim of this paper is to delve into young learners’ perceptions towards peer feedback which is used during the applicability of the “process writing” approach in learning English as a foreign language as well as the impact of peer review on their writing performance.

To this end, a study was conducted at the sixth grade of two Greek state primary schools involving two experimental (44 students) and two control (46 students) groups.

Entry and exit questionnaires were administered to the participants of the study in order to explore their perceptions in the beginning and the end of the research and trace any differences due to the intervention, regarding both inter-group and intra-group responses.

The data analysis confirms an inter- and intra- group change of attitudes and points to the metacognitive awareness of the experimental group students as far as their notions towards writing are concerned.

Moreover, the subjects’ performance was measured in a pre- and post-writing test revealing a statistically significant change of the written capacity of the two groups corroborating, thus, the salience of receiving peer commentary during writing in English as an FL.