Influencing factors, student perceptions, effectiveness of peer and teacher feedback on Chinese EFL high school students' English writing

In English writing instruction, effective feedback enhances learners’ writing skills and attitudes. Feedback is usually given either through teacher feedback or peer feedback, and now even through machine (computer-based) feedback. However, in most ESL/EFL settings, such as in China, teachers usually practice giving teacher feedback on their students’ writing, and not so much on promoting students to give and receive feedback from their peers. Chinese high school writing instruction predominantly relies on teacher feedback, in which it has been found that it limits students’ opportunities for revision and peer discussion. Grounded in Engeström’s (1987) Activity Theory and Slavin’s (1980) Cooperative Learning Theory, this study explores the impact of peer feedback, with teacher guidance, on Chinese EFL high school students’ English writing performance across five dimensions: idea/content, organization, vocabulary, grammar,and cohesion/coherence. A quasi-experimental design was employed with 150 sophomore students from a Chinese public high school. Participants were divided into three groups: the control group (CG, n=50) receiving only teacher feedback, experimental group 1 (EG1, n=50) receiving only peer feedback, and experimental group 2 (EG2, n=50) receiving both teacher and peer feedback. The study lasted two months, involving eight writing tasks. Data were collected through pre- and post-tests, EFL writing rubrics, and survey questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANOVA and ANCOVA were used for analysis. Results showed that both EG1 and EG2 significantly outperformed CG in overall writing performance (EG1: M = 78.42, SD = 4.61; EG2: M = 82.15, SD = 4.32; CG: M = 75.96, SD = 4.87; p < 0.05). EG2 demonstrated the greatest improvement across all writing components, particularly in cohesion/coherence (p = 0.01) and vocabulary (p = 0.021), while EG1 showed significant gains in vocabulary (p = 0.031) and cohesion/coherence (p = 0.017). The control group exhibited minimal improvement across all aspects. Survey results revealed that students in both EG1 and EG2 had a positive perception of peer feedback, with EG2 showing the highest satisfaction (M = 4.27, SD = 0.62 on a 5-point Likert scale). Key factors influencing peer feedback effectiveness included accountability, communicativeness, utility, self-efficacy, and receptivity. This study empirically supports the integration of peer feedback in high school EFL writing instruction. Findings suggest that peer feedback, when combined with teacher guidance, yields the most substantial improvements. Educators are encouraged to implement structured peer feedback strategies with guidance from the teacher to maximize learning outcomes. Future research should explore long-term effects and variations in student perceptions when engaging with different peer reviewers.

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