The perceived effectiveness of written peer feedback comments within L2 English academic writing courses

Abstract

At one Estonian university, we have designed a course to support the writing skills of doctorate students who need to write scientific articles for publication in their L2 English. We provide this support by placing these students into small discipline-specific writing groups where they periodically give and receive written feedback on their draft articles. Knowing what may constitute an effective feedback comment will enable us to improve upon current pedagogical practices. In this study, we develop a coding scheme to measure the impact of both affective and non-affective feedback comments on the peer feedback process. We use this scheme in tandem with questionnaires to assess the effectiveness of postgraduate peer feedback comments as perceived by both L1 Estonian doctoral students and expert writing assessors. Within this context, the results suggest that cover letters and the tone of feedback comments have a noticeable impact on the peer feedback process.

Keywords

• language learning and teaching
• EFL and ESL writing
• L1 Estonian
• revision comments
• non-revision comments
• hedging devices
• PhD students
• cover letters
• writing groups
• peer review