Features and Perception of EFL Students’ Feedback on Their Peers’ Writing

The study aims at validating the effectiveness of peer feedback in an EFL writing context. Twenty-two college students participated in the study. On the basis of the analysis of scores and peer feedback of the participants’ writing, and their responses to the questionnaire on the benefits and problems of the peer feedback activity, the following outcomes were obtained: 1) compared to the teacher’s judgment on students’ writings, they assigned significantly higher scores to their peers’ writing; 2) their written comments on their peers’ writing can be categorized into two features: micro-level comments and broad statements; and 3) they listed substantial benefits and drawbacks of the peer feedback activity. The pedagogical implication is that in order to foster the advantages of the peer feedback activity and overcome its drawbacks in EFL writing class, it is firstly required to help learners clearly understand the role of peer feedback in the revision stage, and then to devote efforts to organize a positive context to implement the activity effectively by establishing proper procedures of the activity and offering systematic practice in pre-training.