Using Peer Response Groups Strategy to Improve
Students’ Writing Skills: A Guide for EFL Teachers
Abstract
These
materials were developed to help guide an EFL teacher’s approach to
incorporating peers groups as one of language learning strategy. Peer response groups aim to improve students’
self correction and writing skills. Writer think the strategy is useful because
peer response groups leads to increased achievement by helping students develop
judgment and skills more quickly than working individually. All students can
benefit from this strategy in learning, especially start from learning writing
in Senior High School.
I. Introduction
Writing well is not just an option for students now; it has become a dire necessity
in the study of a second or foreign language. Along with others skill in
English, writing is considered as one way to measure individual’s language
proficiency in most contexts education level in ESL/EFL country. From a
pedagogical point of view, writing is not a natural activity but is a highly
complex task. In general, students need
to master the competencies expected based on five components in the profile of
writing by Jacob (1981) which they are content, organization, vocabulary,
language use and mechanic. We can say that, writing is a skill that
involves a number of complex rhetorical and linguistic operations which must be
taught.
Related to phenomena in Indonesian senior high school
level, curriculum target in English Language Teaching (ELT) is
required students to produce the types of text (genres) include short
functional texts, monologues and essays of certain genres. However, almost students have greater difficulty every produce a piece of text
than others skill. Many Indonesian’
students failed in writing skill such as writing sentences, paragraphs
development (organization), and usage of correct grammar. Beside that, teacher’s factor
also influenced students’ ability to develop and improve writing ability. Many
teachers still use the traditional classroom management where the classroom
organization was a teacher fronted one, with students
sitting in rows facing the teacher.
Considering the explanation above, Indonesian English
teachers must have responsibility as they are demanded to have teaching
strategy in order to solve the problem faced by the students in
learning writing skill. According Swan
(2009:121) in order to teach the forms of the target language, the
conventions for their use, and the receptive and productive skills necessary
for their effective retrieval and deployment, teachers need interesting and
engaging presentation and practice activities. So that, teachers need the
strategy that can enrich the teaching of writing in many ways and can be used
by students as their own language learning strategies, especially in writing.
Peer response group is one of the
strategies of Cooperative Language Learning (CLL)
that can be used in writing class. By implementing peer writing groups, teacher
encourage students to give, seek, and react to oral feedback among themselves
as they write, in addition to reacting to the teacher’s traditional comments on
finished papers (Herman in Ericdigests : 2009). Working in peers group,
students become skilled at cooperating with others and express their own
opinions, ideas and feelings guided by the teacher. Students can help each
other and themselves through peer response groups. Peer response groups, if set
up carefully, can help students master writing skills, sharpen their editing
skills, and become better editors of their own work.
II. The Nature of Peer Response Groups
The use of peer response groups in
writing classrooms has become increasingly popular in recent years as emphasis
has shifted from product to process. Though Gere (1987) notes that peer
response can be traced back as early as the writing groups of colonial America,
peer response was not popularized as a teaching technique until the dawn of the
process movement. Moffett (1968) and Murray (1968) introduced the benefits of
peer response two years later and then following Elbow’s germinal work (1973)
“Writing without teachers”, there was a large boom in peer response and writing
group literature during the mid-1970 and throughout the 1980.
There are a number of terms that are
used interchangeably and refer to peer response group such as peer review, peer
feedback, peer editing, peer critique but all of them share the same idea where
students offer constructive criticism after reading and evaluating each other’s
work. Liu and Hansen (2002) defined it as “the use of learners as sources of
information and interact ants for each other in such a way that learners assume
roles and responsibilities normally taken on by formally trained teacher,
tutor, or editor in commenting on and critiquing each other’s drafts in both
written and oral formats in the process of writing” (p.75). In short, peer
response provides an opportunity for students to discuss and formulate ideas
about the content of their writing as well as to help each other in developing
writing skill.
a.
Why Is This
Strategy Useful?
Peer response groups aim to improve students’ language
development and skills. The strategy pairs or groups students together to work
on a task where teachers emphasize peer interaction and discussion to complete
the tasks. This strategy is useful because collaborative learning in small
groups leads to increased achievement by helping students develop judgment and
skills more quickly than working individually. All students can benefit from
this strategy, especially English language learners started from senior high
school till university level.
Ferris, D and
Hedgcock in their book Teaching ESL Composition state six principles for
effective peer response:
1.
Make peer
response integral part of the course
2.
Model the
process
3.
Build peer
response skill progressively throughout the term
4.
Structure the
response task
5.
Vary peer
response activities
6.
Hold students
accountable for giving feedback and for considering any feedback they receive.
Based on the explanation above, EFL
teachers can adopt and modify some basic principle of peer response group that
suitable for EFL students context in English Language Teaching (ELT) in
classroom instruction.
For examples, teacher can
instruct students in tutoring practices or in assuming roles in a small group.
In peer tutoring, two students take on the roles of tutor and tutee or coach
and player. Teachers can use this strategy for tasks such as reading a passage
aloud and answering comprehension questions. It can also be used in practicing
conversations with guided discussion questions.
In peer response groups, four or
five students share responsibility for a task. The task can be reading and
answering comprehension questions. Another task can be editing a piece of
writing. When editing as a peer response group, one student edits punctuation,
one student edits spelling, and one student provides general feedback. Teachers
can group students by age or ability or they can create mixed groups.
In this model of
learning, learners have great responsibility for their learning as we are moving
from teacher-centered to learner-centered approaches to teaching and learning.
Finally, peer review activities build a sense of classroom community. Students
learn to communicate effectively, and accept different perspectives while
listening carefully, thinking critically, and participating constructively.
Like Michael Swan has stated in his
article that is not whether students ‘have read or listened
successfully’, but what, if anything, they have learnt in the process.
b.
The
Implementing of Peer Response Strategy in Writing Classroom Activity
It is easy to think that you, as the
teacher, are the only person who can or should respond to your students'
writing, but don't forget the other people in the classroom as well, they are
the students! Peer response
group basically means as way made students interest in writing activity,
develops values of caring and sharing among students. The efficiency of peer
response group depends on two factors that are teacher planning and students
training. In order to support the success of application of this strategy,
there are some guidelines for EFL teachers when implementing peer response
group in EFL writing class.
Firtsly, the students is encouraged
to write paragraphs and essays and then they are asked to comment and give
feedback on each other’s paragraphs and essays. In this
activity, students having their papers workshopped will read their papers aloud
while their group members listen attentively and follow along on their copies. Reading
each other's work will expose the students to different ideas and different
levels and ways of using English. This is engaging students in
meaningful and problem-solving activities that promote their critical thinking
skills and creativity rather than receiving and memorizing information.
Secondly, the students are asked to
evaluate each other’s work based on a checklist that was given to them. The
teachers train the students on how to give constructive feedback and
demonstrated that on some paragraphs and essays. Teacher can ask
students to answer questions about the organisation of the writing and the
content, e.g. Is there enough information? Is it interesting? How can it be
improved? It
can be answered when they read of their
classmates writing carefully several times and focus their attention on the
meaning of text. Realise that peers have
the opportunity to tell what they do not understand about his or her writing,
to ask questions about it, and to point out what peers like about it. If
students have any questions or do not know how to respond to their classmate's
writing, they can ask teacher for help.
By the end of the process, the students
exchanged their assignments and they were asked to comment on each other’s
writings. Based on the comments that they gave to each other, they revised,
reorganized and edited their work. They repeated the process several times
before the submission of the final version to the teacher.
III. Problems
and Discussion
Despite its perceived benefits, some
researchers found that peer response group were viewed with some disappointed result and produced
few benefits especially in EFL/ESL country. Students feedback considered does
not help revision in drafting process because they are not capable of providing
a high-quality feedback similar to that offered by their teachers. This peer
response approach also contains complex and controversial issues in institutes
or classroom contexts (Liu and Hansen, 2002). For instance, multi-cultural
learners in the classrooms, especially ESL settings, often have difficulties
addressing suggestions and ideas to peers because of few peer feedback
activities. Cultural factors influence the interactions with learners and the revision
processes in the peer response workshop.
Learners from
Asian countries (e.g., China or Japan) become reluctant to remark on their products
and are rather more likely to work toward maintaining a harmonious balance with
others (Carson and Nelson 1996; Goldstein, 2005). This case will happen in
Indonesian context that English as Foreign Language. Despite of culture, the
mastery of target language is big obstacle to develop good response in group of
writing.
Many researchers think that students
should be given intensive training to enable them to participate fully in the
process. Berg (1999) examined the effects of peer response on ESL students’
revision strategies and writing outcomes. The main question addressed in her
study is whether trained peer responseinfluences writing outcomes, revision
strategies, and peer talk about ESL student texts. The study revealed that
“trained peer response positively affected writing outcomes, revision
strategies, and peer talk about ESL student texts” (p.240). Berg confirmed the
success of peer response training by making a comparison for revision outcomes
after peer feedback by trained and untrained students. As a result, if it is
introduced with caution and after training students, it could be a part of any
English writing classroom instructions.
a.
Preparing
Students for Peer Response Groups
Students may have little exposure to
different forms of assessment and so may lack the necessary skills and
judgements to effectively manage self and peer correction. It is helpful to
introduce students to the concepts and elements of peer response group. To
suitable for EFL context in practices, the writer have assembled a kit of basic
principles and tested exercises which is combining from many resourse. It could
help teachers consolidate and improve the ways they teach peer writing and
response in any course, with any size class, at any level of student mastery.
Some of these activities can also be adapted for teaching more formal writing
projects that undergo draft and revision.
1.
Set aside time for the initial peer activities to happen in
class.
The students spent two weeks doing
pre-writing activities, generating ideas, reviewing the opinions in the
textbook, organizing essay structures, and making a draft. After working on a draft
for two weeks, the participants brought two copies of their drafts to hold peer
feedback events and to receive written commentary from their peers. In each
peer feedback session, all students randomly picked up one student’s essay and
a peer feedback question sheet from a desk that the teacher prepared. They read
the draft carefully and filled in the feedback sheet (expressing the good
points, points to be revised, and suggestions).
2.
Giving
some understanding of peer resaponse group
In order for peer groups to produce such results, they
require careful and detailed guidance about what is peer response?
peer (n) a person of your age group
—
your friends
—
your classmates
—
your co-workers
response (n) feedback
—
questions
—
comments
—
suggestions
3. Share responsibility
™
Everyone’s job is to provide feedback
for other students.
™
Do not let one or two people dominate
the discussion.
4. Be aware of time
§ Set
a time limit for responding to others’ writing.
§ Everyone
should get a turn.
§ Respond
with general impressions first.
o
what you liked
o
what you didn’t understand
§ Give
more specific feedback last.
o
what can be added
o
what can be deleted
o
what can be changed
5. Allow time for reading
ü Prepare
photocopies of your work for your peers.
ü Read
your work aloud to your peers or give them time to read silently.
6. Be supportive and constructive
ü Be considerate
of others’ feelings.
ü Focus
on meaning, not on minor errors in grammar or spelling.
ü The
writer makes the final decisions about comments and suggestions.
The best of peer response groups is
can be helps students to interact and increase their motivation. The aim is to
move from a teacher-centered classroom into a student-centered classroom where
the students confer and help each other. They read and comment on each other’s
work, thus increasing their opportunities for interaction and improving their
social relations and increasing their self-confidence.
First, the use
of such groups has increased with the shift to the process approach to writing
(Flower & Hayes, 1981) and the consequent emphasis on helping students to
acquire strategies "for getting started ... for drafting ... for revising
... and for editing" (Silva, 1990, p. 15).
Second, in the communicative language
classroom the focus is on student- centered learning as opposed to the more
traditional teacher-fronted class (Savignon, 1991). peer response groups are a
form of cooperative language learning, the benefits of which are well
researched (McGroarty, 1989). These benefits include academic achievement and
language development as well as improved social relations and increased self-confidence
(Coelho, 1992; Slavin, 1991) In short, the use of peer response groups is
supported by general theories of language learning, principles of cooperative
learning, the cognitive process theory of writing, and theories of second
language acquisition.
IV. CONCLUSION
In EFL context, peer response group
have a positive effects in writing classes to enhance students’ motivation and
improve their writing skills. Peer response in process writing classes should
be an integrated component of every writing course. By providing students opportunities to write, and to work with their
peers via writing, a teacher gives students an opportunity to become active
agents in their learning. However, peer response still needs further
inquiry into the effectiveness of writing development.
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