Mangelsdorf (1992) believes that peer feedback is “a writing teaching activity in which students correct their compositions and put forward suggestions for revision.” Keh (1990) defines peer feedback model as an important step in process approach writing method, in which peers exchange drafts, point out the advantages and disadvantages of writing, provide suggestions and implement in the revision stage. According to Hu (2005), peer feedback, as a supplementary to teacher comments, is “a collaborative activity involving students’ reading, criticism and feedback on each other’s writing; both to improve immediate text and writing ability”. Likewise, it is also believed that “peer feedback enhances a sense of audience, raises learners’ awareness of themselves, encourages cooperative learning and fosters ownership” (Tsui & Ng, 2000).
In teaching, peer feedback refers to “taking learners as the source of information and interaction, and assuming the roles and responsibilities of formally trained teachers, reviewers or editors to exchange ideas with each other by commenting and criticizing drafts in written and oral forms in the process of writing” (Liu & Hansen, 2018). This definition focuses on the identity of students and emphasizes that peers can play different roles in this activity. In a word, peer feedback is a “collaborative writing method”, and students benefit from the diversity of peer feedback and peer input (Chong, 2010).
2.2 Student Engagement
As a pluralistic construct, researchers put forward diverse definitions of student engagement according to different research contexts. Student engagement is seen as students’ commitment or involvement to the activities (Fredricks et al., 2004). Student engagement is initially regarded as a two-dimensional frame: behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement (Martin, 2008). Later, research in the field of psychology holds that student engagement as a meta-construct is mainly composed of three interrelated and interactive dimensions: behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and emotional engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004; Christenson et al., 2012). In addition, student engagement is the energy and effort paid by students in the learning process, which is affected by internal and external factors, such as teacher-pupil relationship, student-student relationship, learning activities and environment (Bond et al., 2020).
In English writing, student engagement in peer feedback is reflected in the dimensions of behavior, cognition and emotion, which are correlated and influenced by personal and contextual factors (Ellis, 2010; Han & Hyland, 2015; Zhang & Hyland, 2018). Regarding these three dimensions, Wang et al. (2019) found that students’ academic achievements are significantly and positively correlated with their learning behavioral engagement. Behavioral engagement can predict and significantly affect learning outcomes (Schaufeli et al., 2002).
Chapter Three Theoretical Foundations ............... 17
3.1 Cooperative Learning Theory ................... 17
3.2 Learning Engagement Theory ........................... 18
Chapter Four Research Methodology ............................ 21
4.1 Research Questions ................................ 21
4.2 Research Methods .......................... 21
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ....................... 28
5.1 Level of Students’ Perception of Peer Feedback ...................... 28
5.2 Students’ Behavioral Engagement with Peer Feedback ..................... 30
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Level of Students’ Perception of Peer Feedback
Results showed that the students’ perception level of the six dimensions in the questionnaire was different. The following table provides the general information about students’ perception level of these six dimensions
