Studies in Educational Evaluation 81 (2024) 101337
Available online 2 February 2024
0191-491X/© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/).
Engaging secondary school students with peer feedback in L2 writing classrooms: A mixed-methods study
Xiaolong Cheng
a, Lawrence Jun Zhang
b,1,*aSchool of Foreign Languages, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, China
bFaculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand
A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords:
L2 writing Written feedback Peer feedback Student engagement Teacher scaffolding
A B S T R A C T
While recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of studies on peer feedback in L2 writing, little is known about how L2 learners engage affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively with this practice. To narrow this gap, the present study employing a mixed-methods approach examined L2 learners’ engagement with peer feedback in the Chinese secondary school context. Data were collected from a variety of sources over 12 weeks, including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, writing journals, and learners’ first and revised writing samples. The results showed that the teacher’s scaffolding with systematic instruction comprising pre-feedback sessions, multiple feedback practices, and post-feedback reinforcement helped the participants engage with peer feedback proactively in affect, behavior, and cognition. Furthermore, the participants’ perception of their improvement in the three dimensions was also evident over the semester. Overall, this study demonstrates the role of teachers in student engagement and advances our understanding of L2 learner engagement with peer feedback. Additionally, it offers important pedagogical implications for fostering and promoting L2 learners’ engagement.
1. Introduction
As a crucial component of formative assessment, peer feedback refers to the reciprocal process in which students provide information and comments on one or more dimensions of their peers’ task performance or understanding (; Latifi & Noroozi, 2021), which scaffolds L2 students’
writing processes and enhances their writing products (Noroozi et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2021). Compared with teacher feedback, peer feed- back has some distinctive features such as providing students with op- portunities to peer interactions, fostering their critical thinking skills, and developing their learning autonomy (Wu et al., 2022; Zhang &
Cheng, 2020). Given its merits and significance, peer feedback has been brought to the fore and related studies in L2 writing have proliferated.
Despite the growing body of inquiries into peer feedback, those focusing on student engagement with this practice are scarce. As an important factor, engagement mediates the efficacy of feedback (Mao &
Lee, 2022; Shen & Chong, 2023). Amidst the limited studies, researchers investigated and observed L2 tertiary students’ engagement based on one-off peer feedback (e.g., Fan & Xu, 2020; Yu et al., 2019). Conse- quently, we have little knowledge about how secondary school students engage with peer feedback over time. Such knowledge enables us to gain
a nuanced and deepened understanding of how peer feedback influences L2 secondary school students’ learning and writing, namely the mech- anism of this practice, which can help them capitalize on peer feedback and harvest its benefits.
Against this backdrop, in this study we adopted a mixed-methods approach to address the important gaps. Drawing upon data from different sources, including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and students’ first and revised writing samples, we examined secondary school students’ engagement with peer feedback from affective, behavioral, and cognitive perspectives over 12 weeks in authentic classrooms in China. This study is expected to extend our current knowledge about L2 learner engagement with feedback and offer teachers useful pedagogical information in terms of how to effec- tively engage their students with this practice.
2. Literature review 2.1. Peer feedback
With the surge in the number of students in higher education, it is a herculean task for teachers to offer detailed feedback efficiently due to
* Correspondence to: Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland 1042, New Zealand.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (X. Cheng), [email protected] (L.J. Zhang).
1 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1025-1746
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Studies in Educational Evaluation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/stueduc
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2024.101337
Received 30 May 2023; Received in revised form 14 January 2024; Accepted 24 January 2024
various constraints (e.g., heavy workload and large-size classes) (Latifi et al., 2023; Noroozi et al., 2016). Consequently, students probably miss the best timing to receive feedback, which may undermine its effec- tiveness. In this situation, peer feedback has been established as an alternative to teacher feedback. As an empowering and valuable teaching instrument, peer feedback is widely employed in classroom pedagogy. Unlike teacher feedback, peer feedback provides students with a learning experience in which “students learn with and from each other without the immediate intervention of a teacher (Boud et al., 1999, p. 413).
In terms of writing, the existing studies have shown that peer feed- back contributes to the quality of students’ essays (Haro et al., 2023; Xu et al., 2023). The positive effects on essay writing can be attributed to the advantages of peer feedback. Specifically, peer feedback has the potential to improve students’ skills of detecting and revising errors independently, thus promoting their self-reflection and critical thinking (Novakovich, 2016). In addition, peer feedback is not only beneficial for the local areas of essay writing (i.e., language), but also enriches stu- dents’ discipline/subject content knowledge, deepening their under- standing of the writing topics (Haro et al., 2023; Kerman et al., 2022).
2.2. Challenges of peer feedback and teacher scaffolding
Despite the benefits peer feedback affords, it is not an easy job to participate in this activity (Noroozi et al., 2016). To be effective, peer feedback should be of high quality, which improves students’ agentic use and informs their subsequent learning (Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022).
The extant literature has suggested several challenges and issues relevant to peer feedback in the field of writing. The first challenge is that effective peer feedback entails training experiences. Due to the lack of teacher training, many students (low-proficiency ones in particular) do not know how to communicate with their peers, how to deliver peer feedback in an appropriate fashion, how to balance positive and critical comments, and how to soften the negative tones (Yu & Lee, 2016).
Another challenge is that students, particularly EFL learners tend to distrust peer feedback (Lee, 2017; Zhang & Cheng, 2020). Specifically, in EFL contexts, teachers are regarded as the authority figures. Thus, students always trust teacher feedback and downplay peer feedback, believing that students are not equipped with adequate expertise to provide reliable feedback (Noroozi et al., 2016). With such an attitude, they probably disregard peer feedback, which may prevent themselves from reaping the benefits of peer feedback for learning. Additionally, students are reluctant to provide and receive negative peer feedback, which is likely to result in some consequences such as losing face and failing to form a harmonious personal relationship (Lee, 2017). Finally, peer feedback is a cognitively demanding practice. To generate quality peer feedback, feedback providers need to exert their cognitive effort to review their peers’ writing critically, detect the strengths and problems in writing, explain the problems carefully, and figure out the feasible solutions to them (Kerman et al., 2022; Noroozi, 2023). For feedback recipients, they have to analyze, decode, interpret, and use the peer feedback to facilitate their revisions and learning so that peer feedback can realize its full potential (Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022). With these challenges, students may find it difficult to provide helpful peer feed- back and engage themselves with it profoundly, which has an adverse impact on the value of this activity.
The above discussion indicates that student engagement with peer feedback would be fruitless without external support; and additional help is needed to maximize the effectiveness of peer feedback (Latifi et al., 2023; Zhu & Carless, 2018). To help students navigate the chal- lenges and promote their engagement with peer feedback, teachers should play an active role. In the current literature, researchers have focused on how teachers scaffold L2 learners to provide constructive peer feedback (i.e., peer feedback training). For example, Min (2005)
employed teacher demonstration and teacher-student conferences with each reviewer to coach students in terms of four aspects: Clarifying writers’ intention, identifying problems, explaining the nature of prob- lems, and making specific suggestions. Yang and Meng (2013) trained EFL college students to become successful reviewers through teacher instruction and student practice. In Liou and Peng’s (2009) study, teacher instruction in how to make comments and teacher guidance on discovering effective comments were used to foster reviewers. As Min (2016) stated, the majority of training programs include observation and emulation to nurture adept peer reviewers and improve the quality of the feedback they provide.
Moreover, some studies have examined the effects of trained peer feedback. Drawing upon peer feedback, and first and revised writing drafts, Min (2006) investigated the effects of trained peer feedback on revision types and writing quality. The results revealed that after peer feedback training, the students took up a larger number of peer feedback points in their revision and their writing quality was improved signifi- cantly. Rahimi (2013) followed Min’s (2006) training procedures to explore how training influenced tertiary EFL learners’ comments in traditional writing classrooms. He also found that training enabled L2 learners to provide effective feedback and enhance the quality of both revision and writing considerably.
In summary, we can see that the available studies have detailed the difficulty that students confront when they participate in peer feedback and discussed teacher scaffolding in how to help learners provide peer feedback effectively. While the previous studies have reported the pos- itive effects of teacher training on the nature of feedback and students’ revision/writing performance, few studies have comprehensively investigated the influence of teacher scaffolding on L2 learners’ (as feedback recipients) engagement with peer feedback.
2.3. Student engagement
Engagement stems from educational psychology and is an important index to measure the extent to which students participate in their learning (Handley et al., 2011; Sulis, 2022). More specifically, engage- ment is an umbrella term, encompassing the extent students exert attention, interest, and willingness to utilize their competence and skills to make progress in their learning (Zhang & Hyland, 2022). Currently, the widely-used framework to examine student engagement was estab- lished by Fredricks et al. (2004). In a review article, which was based on analysis of ere 44 articles, they conceptualized engagement as a meta-construct with three interconnected dimensions: Affective, behavioral, and cognitive.
In recent years, there is a shift towards students’ receptivity and agentic use of feedback in order to uncover the power of feedback (Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022). Accordingly, researchers pay increasing attention to how learners engage with feedback in L2 writing. Adopting Fredricks et al.’s (2004) framework, Ellis (2010) viewed student engagement as how they respond to oral/written corrective feedback (CF) affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively. Specifically, affective engagement concerns students’ attitudinal responses to CF they received; behavioral engagement refers to students’ uptake of CF in their revisions; cognitive engagement is relevant to students’ cognitive and psychological investment in addressing CF and facilitating revisions.
Inspired by Ellis’ (2010) conceptualization, many studies have enriched and developed the sub-constructs of engagement (Han & Hyland, 2015;
Koltovskaia, 2020; Shen & Chong, 2023; Zhang & Hyland, 2018, 2022;
Zheng & Yu, 2018). For instance, Zheng and Yu (2018) operationalized affective engagement as affect (emotional reactions in revision), judgement (personal judgement and moral judgement toward feed- back), and appreciation (the value of feedback). Overall, these re- searchers have made contributions to the conceptualization of student engagement with feedback, fine-tuning and strengthening the framework.
Based on the above discussion, this study considered student engagement as a multifaceted meta-construct, consisting of three interlocked elements: 1) Affective engagement refers to students’ atti- tudes towards peer feedback, which can be examined from interest, value, and affect (Fan & Xu, 2020); 2) behavioral engagement is defined as what students do with peer feedback, comprising revision operations and the observable strategies they adopt to address feedback and improve their learning (Cheng & Liu, 2022; Zheng & Yu, 2018); 3) cognitive engagement concerns how students attend to peer feedback cognitively, which is manifested in the depth of processing feedback (noticing or understanding), and the cognitive and metacognitive op- erations to address feedback and facilitate their revisions (Han &
Hyland, 2015; Zhang & Hyland, 2022).
2.4. Empirical studies on student engagement with peer feedback in L2 writing
Currently, student engagement with peer feedback is insufficiently researched (Fan & Xu, 2020). In such limited studies, scholars mainly investigated how students engaged with peer feedback behaviorally (e.
g., Kerman et al., 2022; Noroozi et al., 2020). However, due to the in- tricacy of the three dimensions of engagement, merely examining behavioral engagement would mask and simplify the complexity of student engagement.
To date, there is a paucity of comprehensive studies on student engagement with peer feedback (e.g., Fan & Xu, 2020; Yu et al., 2019).
For example, drawing upon the data from semi-structured interviews, stimulated recalls, online interviews, and first and revised versions of master’s theses, Yu et al. (2019) investigated how postgraduates engaged with peer feedback in an academic writing context, and found that while individual differences existed in their affective engagement, their behavioral and cognitive engagement were at a surface level. Their case study further reveled that the three dimensions of engagement interacted in a dynamic and complicated way, affective engagement promoting or hindering their behavioral and cognitive engagement.
Additionally, Fan and Xu (2020) inquired into student engagement with peer feedback in a tertiary context. Having collected data from multiple sources, they revealed that L2 university students’ engagement was mediated by feedback type. Specifically, these L2 learners exhibited profound engagement with form-focused peer feedback, while they had perfunctory engagement with content-focused feedback.
While the above reviewed studies are inspirational and add to our knowledge about student engagement with peer feedback, there are still several research gaps. First, the previous studies focused on adult learners, directing little attention to secondary school students.
Considering they are different with regard to language proficiency, learning beliefs, and other contextual factors, and such differences in- fluence student engagement (Fan & Xu, 2020; Yu & Lee, 2016), studies examining secondary school students’ engagement are warranted. Sec- ond, the existing studies tended to base on one-shot writing task to observe student engagement, which might undermine the reliability of findings. Accordingly, studies with more rounds of writing tasks in a relatively long-term timeframe are in need (Wang, 2014). Finally, these studies were qualitatively oriented with a limited number of partici- pants, which to some extent prevented from transferring the findings to other contexts. Thus, we needed more quantitative or mixed-methods studies.
To bridge the gaps, our study examined how secondary school stu- dents’ engagement with peer feedback based on three rounds of tasks in L2 writing classrooms where pedagogical activities in relation to feed- back were provided to scaffold students. Our study was informed by the overarching research question: How do Chinese secondary school stu- dents engage with peer feedback affectively, behaviorally, and cogni- tively over 12 weeks as a result of teacher scaffolding?
3. Methodology 3.1. Participants
Our study was conducted in a senior high school in mainland China and we focused on two classes of Year 11. During the period of data collection, all the students enrolled in a compulsory course (i.e., English course). The course was an integrated one, which aimed to foster stu- dents’ comprehensive English ability in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and help them achieve high scores in the College Entrance Examination (Gaokao). Due to the washback of the Gaokao, the course placed more emphasis on grammar, reading, and writing. In this course, the students needed to complete three writing tasks with around 150 words within 40 min in class. The writing topics were selected from the past Gaokao test battery, the genre of which was argumentation (see Appendix A).
In our study, the participants were the course teacher and 74 stu- dents in her class. The instructor Hui (pseudonym) was responsible for two classes, who earned her master’s degree in applied linguistics and had 6-year English teaching experiences. As for the student participants, there were 53 males and 21 females with the ages ranging from 15 to 17.
All of them were native-mandarin speakers and nobody had any expe- riences of learning English abroad. On average, they had learned English for 8 years. To have a deeper insight into their engagement, we selected 15 students as focal participants in the qualitative phase. We selected these focal students through a purposive sampling method, taking into consideration gender, English proficiency, experiences in learning En- glish, and their willingness, and the discussion with the course teacher.
According to their scores of English examination in the last semester, their English proficiency ranged from low-proficiency to high- proficiency.
3.2. Research context: The teacher’s instructional activities related to feedback
Despite the prescribed syllabus, Hui carried out some activities associated with feedback. To deepen the understanding of student engagement over time, this section presented the course teacher’s pedagogical approach to implementing feedback. According to class- room observations and the free talks with the course instructor, Hui viewed feedback as a process, where there were three stages (before feedback, during feedback, and after feedback). In each stage, she designed different practices to scaffold students.
3.2.1. Pre-feedback stage
In this phase, Hui organized pre-feedback sessions, which included two preparatory activities. First, she specified English writing scoring rubrics carefully, which enabled students to understand what consti- tuted a good writing. Specifically, she explained each dimension of the rubrics and how she made use of the rubrics to evaluate students’ writing. Next, she asked the students to discuss the different dimensions, after which they were invited to assess their own writing.
The other activity was peer feedback training, which was provided after each writing task. In the training, Hui emphasized the purpose and value of peer feedback. Then, she offered the students different sug- gestions to deliver feedback such as modeling how to interact with their peers and how to provide feedback on both local and global issues. After that, the students were paired to practice peer feedback, in which Hui observed how each pair implemented peer feedback and helped the students solve the difficulty in review. Finally, Hui asked the students who did well in this activity to share their experiences in order to facilitate other students’ participation. Apart from coaching in providing feedback, Hui taught the students how to deal with peer feedback. For one thing, she suggested the students revision strategies such as consulting the internet, textbooks, and dictionaries, asking their teach- ers and friends for help, and referring to their previous writing samples.
For another, she introduced several cognitive/metacognitive operations including prioritizing, self-reflections, self-evaluations, and monitoring.
To help students understand and take advantage of these operations, Hui carefully explained and modeled them for the students.
According to the free talks, observations, and student interviews, Hui attached great importance to learning environment in order to encourage the students’ participation. Specifically, she established a supportive and caring environment, where she downplayed the student- teacher power relationship and emphasized the collaboration between students. Within this environment, the students could have friendly and positive interactions with their peers and teacher. As such, the feedback providers could point out their peers’ errors and problems honestly without worrying about interpersonal relationships and the recipients were ready and willing to accept their peers’ feedback.
3.2.2. During feedback stage
As Hui stated in the free talks, students could learn more from different sources of feedback. Thus, she integrated teacher and peer feedback in the English course. She further underscored the importance of feedback and revision, and hoped that the students responded to the feedback actively in revision. As she believed, “it is revision not feed- back itself that enhances students’ writing performance.”
After students had completed the writing tasks independently, Hui implemented peer feedback. In the review, the students communicated with their peers and provided them with written feedback on different aspects of writing. Subsequently, they were asked to revise their writing based on the peer feedback, and then submitted the second drafts of their writing.
Having received the second drafts, Hui reviewed each writing sample and provided the participants with teacher written feedback, which addressed the unresolved problems/errors. Based on the free talks and student interviews, Hui preferred to provide indirect feedback so as to engage students with feedback more deeply, and balanced the positive and negative comments. After teacher feedback, the participants needed to revise accordingly and generated the final drafts for scoring.
3.2.3. Post-feedback stage
In this stage, the participants needed to self-reflect on their experi- ences in providing and receiving feedback. To help their self-reflections, Hui provided them with some prompts, which concerned their general feelings about the feedback practices/activities and what they had learned from them. In the following classes, students shared their ideas with their classmates in groups, enabling them to realize the usefulness of peer and teacher feedback and make good use of them to inform their following learning.
3.3. Data collection
In our study, we collected both quantitative and qualitative data to answer the research question. To allow data triangulation, we collected data from multiple sources over 12 weeks, including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, first and revised writing samples, written peer feedback, and writing journals. The procedures of data collection are presented in Table 1.
To gain a general understanding of student engagement with peer feedback over time, we administered the questionnaires to all the par- ticipants at the outset (week 1) and end of the study (week 12). The participants were asked to complete the printed or paper version of the questionnaires in 10 min in class and then returned to the first author. To ensure the reliability, they were requested to provide their sincere and frank responses. The Peer Feedback Engagement Questionnaire (PFEQ) (see Appendix B) was developed based on Fredricks et al.’s (2004) tripartite model and the previous empirical studies on student engage- ment with feedback (e.g., Cheng & Liu, 2022; Fan & Xu, 2020; Koltov- skaia, 2020; Zhang & Hyland, 2022). It was a self-reported questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale from “1” (strong disagree) to “5” (strongly
agree). Informed by the three-dimensional framework, our question- naire was designed to measure affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement.
Prior to data collection, the questionnaire was piloted and validated through SPSS version 22. The validation process involved 103 students who came from other four intact classes of Year 11 and did not partic- ipate in our study. To check the validity, exploratory factor analysis was employed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the questionnaire.
The results showed a three-factor model with 17 items, which accounted for 73.4% of the variance (KMO=0.87, p <.001). The three factors were named as affective engagement (5 items) (e.g., I enjoy reading the peer feedback), behavioral engagement (6 items) (e.g., I make revision based on the peer feedback), and cognitive engagement (6 items) (e.g., I can understand the peer feedback). In terms of the internal reliability, Cronbach’s α for the three subscales reached 0.84 (affective engage- ment), 0.82 (behavioral engagement), and 0.80 (cognitive engagement) respectively, all exceeding the threshold value (0.7) (DeVellis, 2012;
D¨ornyei, 2007).
Considering that student engagement cannot be fully observed directly, self-reported data gathered from instruments such as ques- tionnaires or interviews are needed (Hiver et al., 2021; Sun & Zhang, 2024). Thus, the 15 focal participants were interviewed individually to elicit how they engaged with peer feedback affectively, behaviorally, and cognitively in semi-structured format (see Appendix C). To facilitate students’ understanding, the first author conducted the semi-structured interviews in Chinese and each interview lasted around 45 min (totally 15 interviews). Given the time limit of semi-structured interviews, we may miss some information about their engagement. To collect more data and complement to data from interviews, the students were asked to write journals immediately after the interviews, by which some important and interesting data may emerge. In the journal, the partici- pants were asked to record their attitudes towards peer feedback, the strategies they utilized in revision, and the cognitive and metacognitive operations that they deployed. Finally, 15 journals drafted in Chinese were collected.
To triangulate the data from interviews and journals, we also ob- tained and photocopied the focal students’ initial drafts with peer feedback and their revised writing samples. A t otal of 90 writing sam- ples (including first and second drafts of writing in the three tasks) were gathered, which contributed to understanding the patterns of peer feedback and the focal students’ revision operations.
Also, we collected some complementary data, including the free talk with the course instructor, classroom observations, and some documents such as the teacher’s slides, writing syllabus, and writing assessment rubrics. Such complementary data were collected to provide contextual information, depicting the pedagogical context and enabling us to ac- quire a nuanced understanding of L2 learners’ engagement with peer feedback as student engagement is a context-specific construct.
Table 1
Procedures of data collection.
Time Data collected
Week 1 Pre-study questionnaires
Weeks 2-4 Task 1: Focal students’ first writing samples Written peer feedback
Revised drafts of task 1
Weeks 5-7 Task 2: Focal students’ first writing samples Written peer feedback
Revised drafts of task 2
Weeks 8-11
Task 3: Focal students’ first writing samples Written peer feedback
Revised drafts of task 3 Semi-structured interviews Writing journals
Week 12 Post-study questionnaires
3.4. Data analysis
3.4.1. Analysis of pre- and post-study questionnaires
After the collection of questionnaires, the data were cleaned and examined in terms of missing values and outliers. Before statistical tests, the normal distribution of the data were checked. In this study, the data were considered normally distributed if the standardized Skewness and Kurtosis values are with |3.0| and |8.0|, respectively (Field, 2009). Since the data set of our study satisfied normal distribution, paired samples t-tests were used to detect the changes of student engagement with peer feedback in affect, behavior, and cognition. Cohen’s d is a type of effect size, which measures the magnitude of differences between groups or within a group (D¨ornyei, 2007). In our study, it was used to evaluate how large the differences were when we compared the students’ affec- tive, behavioral, and cognitive engagement from the outset to the end of our study (small=0.2, medium=0.5, large=0.8).
3.4.2. Analysis of semi-structured interviews and writing journals All the audio-recordings of the interviews were transcribed verbatim, and checked for accuracy against the original recordings. The interview transcripts and writing journals were analyzed manually to understand how the focal students engaged with peer feedback. First, we read and re-read the transcripts in order to have a general understanding of the qualitative data. Subsequently, we used a thematic analysis to process the qualitative data. More specifically, a deductive approach of thematic analysis was employed. Informed by the conceptualization of engage- ment and the research question, we coded the qualitative data from affective, behavioral, and cognitive perspectives. Furthermore, the three dimensions comprised a series of codes such as the value of peer feed- back, the strategies students used to address feedback, noticing/under- standing of peer feedback, and the cognitive/metacognitive operations deployed to deal with feedback. In the practical analysis, we examined the transcripts and journals carefully, highlighting the sections where students shed light on how they thought of and attended to peer feed- back, and coding them according to the deductive codes. Finally, we made a cross-case comparison and interpretation of the data.
To ensure the trustworthiness, we invited a PhD candidate in applied linguistics to serve as a co-coder. The first author and the PhD candidate coded independently roughly 20% of the data. The inter-coder reliability for coding affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement reached 95.34%, 93.22%, and 91.76%. Any disagreements were resolved through discussion.
3.4.3. Analysis of students’ writing samples and peer feedback
We conducted textual analysis to profile the peers’ feedback prac- tices and explore students’ behavioral engagement deeply. First, we scrutinized and identified the peer feedback on students’ writing. In this study, feedback points refer to the written interventions by peers (Hyland, 2003), and the analysis was based on meaningful units. We analyzed feedback in terms of feedback focus. According to the previous studies (e.g., Cheng et al., 2021; Mao & Crosthwaite, 2019), there were two types of feedback from the perspective of focus: Global feedback and local feedback (see Table 2).
In addition, we compared the peer feedback on students’ first drafts
and their second samples, by which the changes that the participants made can be determined (i.e., revision operations). Following the prior studies (Ene & Upton, 2014; Zhang & Mao, 2023), we classified the revision operations into successful revision, unsuccessful revision, and no-revision. As example 1 shows, we considered this example as suc- cessful revision, since the participant addressed the error correctly ac- cording to the peer feedback.
Example 1.
Peer feedback See films helps us reduce the pressure of study.
S6′s revision Seeing films helps us reduce the pressure of study.
To enhance the reliability of coding, the same co-coder was invited again. Around 20% of the textual data were selected and coded sepa- rately by him and the first author. The inter-coder agreement rates for coding feedback focus and revision operations were 97.27% and 94.68%. Then, we discussed and addressed all the discrepancies in coding.
3.5. Ethical considerations
Our study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by the Human Participants Ethics Committee of the university for the research. To obtain the participants’ consent, participant information sheets and consent forms were distributed to them, which outlined clearly how the study was conducted and what they needed to do in this study. In this way, the participants’ rights were safeguarded and their formal consent were gained as well.
Prior to data collection, the participants were informed that they could withdraw from our study at any time during data collection and were ensured that their identity would be protected fully. Specifically, we decided to use the pseudonyms to report the data and the data collected from this study were only used for research purposes. In addition, all the data in our study were kept and remained confidential.
4. Findings
4.1. Affective engagement
As Table 3 shows, the participants experienced significant improvement in affective engagement (t =3.231, p =.000, d=1.02).
Their improved affective engagement indicated that they had recog- nized the importance of peer feedback and spoken highly of this practice.
According to the qualitative data, 12 out of 15 focal participants valued peer feedback and showed interests in participating in this ac- tivity, which could be evidenced by their expressions such as “enjoy peer feedback”, “useful”, and “helpful”. They showed a positive attitude to- wards peer feedback, as they firmly believed that peer feedback embedded great learning potential. As 10 students (e.g., S2, S3, S6, S12) expressed, peer feedback highlighted the errors that they could not identify independently, increased their language knowledge, and moti- vated them to write better, which contributed to their learning. Also, eight students (e.g., S2, S4, S7) pointed out that peer feedback activity prompted them to reflect on their own writing. For example, in the interview, S2 remarked, “In peer feedback, I shouldered the Table 2
Coding scheme of feedback focus.
Focus Description Example
Global
feedback Feedback on content and organization
▪ These details were not related to the topic.
▪ There is no conclusion.
Local
feedback Feedback on language
▪ Reading book enrich our knowledge.
(enriches)
▪ The combination of the two languages in English class contributes to learn English.(learning)
Table 3
The comparison of pre- and post-study questionnaires.
Perspective Pre-study Post-study Paired samples t-test
M SD M SD t p
Affective 3.13 0.51 3.61 0.65 3.231 .000 Behavioral 3.24 0.58 3.56 0.61 2.753 .011 Cognitive 2.98 0.54 3.63 0.67 3.512 .000
responsibility to indicate my peer’s errors and problems. Thus, I needed to read his writing carefully, which benefited me in terms of self- reflecting on my own writing to check whether I had made the similar errors.” Additionally, seven students (e.g., S3, S4, S7, S8) reported that peer feedback provided them with opportunities to learn from others, which enhanced their writing performance. S7
′
s words were very typical:I really appreciated peer feedback, since it was a good practice in which I could learn from my classmates. In this activity, I accumulated some advanced vocabularies and different sentence patterns, which enriched my language expression and improved the writing performance (S7, journal).
Furthermore, the qualitative data revealed the factors contributing to their positive orientation towards peer feedback, which were asso- ciated with teacher scaffolding. First, the positive affective engagement was attributed to peer feedback training. In this study, the course teacher conducted peer feedback training after each task. The training contributed to the quantity and quality of peer feedback points, which was mentioned by 11 out of 15 focal participants. As S3 wrote in the journal, although she had participated in peer feedback previously, her teachers had not offered any training, which made the classmates implement peer feedback perfunctorily and question its utility. How- ever, in this study the teacher provided three rounds of training, which improved the knowledge of peer feedback and prompted them to generate more quality feedback. In this situation, she believed in the usefulness of peer feedback. The similar opinion was observed in S5
′
s interview:Due to the feedback training sessions, we understood what feedback should be provided and how to deliver it in an appropriate manner. That is, training enhanced the quality of feedback, which facilitated our learning (S5, interview).
As part of the teacher’s scaffolding effort, supportive learning at- mosphere also took effect. In the course, Hui encouraged students to participate in peer feedback actively, emphasizing that feedback pro- viders should identify the peers’ errors honestly to help their learning, and the receivers should be open to the identified errors. S6 referred to this factor in the interview, elaborating on the significance of positive learning climate:
Previously, I had been reluctant to attend peer feedback given the face and interpersonal relationships. However, motivated by the teacher’s encouragement and instruction, I was willing to participate in this activity.
I came to be aware that pointing out errors could improve the classmates’
learning and I also could learn from the identification of errors. Peer feedback could help us achieve a win-win situation (S6, interview).
S1 also attested to the benefits of positive learning environment from the perspective of peer feedback receiver:
Before this study, I had been very anxious and embarrassed when others had pointed out my errors. In this course, the teacher helped us cultivate a right attitude towards errors, being open to them. Currently, I was grateful to errors, since they informed and indicated the following directions that I should pay more attention to. Thus, I welcomed the feedback from peers (S1, journal).
4.2. Behavioral engagement
The questionnaire results in Table 3 revealed that there was a sig- nificant improvement in students’ behavioral engagement with peer feedback over 12 weeks (t =2.753, p =.011, d=.75). The results sug- gested that the students exhibited a deep engagement in behavior.
To have a nuanced insight into students’ behavioral engagement, we examined the focal participants’ texts, semi-structured interviews, and writing journals. The analysis of the focal students’ revision operations indicated that they made substantial modifications to their writing across the three tasks. As Table 4 reveals, a total of 132, 125, and 114 peer feedback points were generated in the three tasks, respectively. In terms of local feedback, they responded to the majority of such feed- back, among which they addressed the majority of local feedback correctly in the three tasks (57.41% vs. 70.53% vs. 76.09%). More encouragingly, the focal participants also attended to global feedback.
Furthermore, they resolved over half of global feedback successfully in the three tasks (54.17% vs. 60% vs. 54.55%).
The extensive behavioral engagement can also be reflected by the focal participants’ proactive utilization of different revision strategies.
Clearly, 10 of 15 students reported that they employed different external resources to address feedback and refine their writing, including teachers, peers, and other sources (e.g., the textbook, dictionaries, and internet). Furthermore, some students (e.g., S4, S7, S8) sought and combined multiple sources of external assistance. As S7 noted, when she found difficult to deal with some feedback points, she first turned to her classmates. If not convinced, she asked the teacher for help.
Intriguingly, despite the employment of external help, the students used it in different ways. Some students made full use of the external resources to guide their English learning. S8 was a case in point. In the task 2, she committed errors in sentence structure and the errors were identified by the peer, after which she consulted a grammar book to address the feedback. In this process, she not only corrected the errors, but also reviewed the different types of sentence structures and took notes. In this sense, S8 viewed addressing feedback as a learning process, rather than correcting errors per se, which contributed to her English learning in the long term.
In contrast, some students (e.g., S2, S4, S12) merely employed the extra help to correct errors and complete revisions. For example, as S4 described his revision process, he received peer feedback on inappro- priate use of vocabulary, and used an online dictionary to address the feedback. Specifically, he searched the synonyms of the words and took them up in revision. However, he did not further study these synonyms carefully and understand the shades of meaning. This meant that he just utilized the external resources to complete the task of revision, failing to take initiatives to expand his language knowledge and further his learning.
Additionally, six students (e.g., S1, S3, S6) utilized the previous revised writing samples to facilitate their revisions. On revising the first draft in task 3, S3 referred backed to the writing samples in task 2, noting: “I found three errors appeared again, so I went back to the second draft of task 2 to check how I corrected them, and reflected on the reasons for the recurrence of the errors.”
Furthermore, the qualitative data showed that students’ behavioral engagement was related to teacher scaffolding. First, the teacher’s emphasis on feedback and revision contributed to their proactive Table 4
The focal students’ revision operations.
Revision operations Task 1 Task 2 Task 3
Local Global Local Global Local Global
Successful 62(57.41%) 13(54.17%) 67(70.53%) 18(60%) 70(76.09%) 12(54.55%)
Unsuccessful 31(28.70%) 5(20.83%) 15(15.79%) 9(30%) 13(14.13%) 4(18.18%)
Non-revision 15(13.89%) 6(25%) 13(13.68%) 3(10%) 9(9.78%) 6(27.27%)
Total 108 24 95 30 92 22
behavioral engagement. S6 demonstrated how the practices influenced the behavioral engagement with feedback.
The previous teachers had not established a culture of revision, so many students had just scanned the feedback and paid little attention to it.
However, in this course, the teacher emphasized the importance of revi- sion and required us to revise writing based on feedback to enhance its effectiveness (S6, interview).
Similar remarks could be observed in S12
′
s reflective journal. As he wrote, the previous teacher did not value revision, so he failed to recognize its significance for learning of English writing. Previously, he mainly focused on the scores to see whether he made progress in English writing, and paid little attention to correcting the errors in revision.Second, the teacher’s instruction of revision strategies also played an important role in behavioral engagement with feedback. As S8 noted in the interview:
The previous teachers did not teach us how to deal with feedback and revise our writing. So, I just incorporated their direct corrections and took them down adjacent to the errors. When facing those difficult errors, I let them go. However, the teacher taught us how to address feedback and errors, so I had some strategies at my disposal and could employ them in revision (S8, interview).
According to S8
′
s responses in the interview, his behavioral engagement remained at the surface level and did not take revision seriously due to the lack of revision strategies. With the teacher’s scaf- folding, he acquired some revision strategies and understood how to address feedback, which benefited his behavioral engagement.Likewise, S10 was a case in point. In the reflective journal, he referred to this factor.
Thanks to the teacher’s instruction, I had accumulated some strategies to address the feedback. With these strategies, it is less challenging for me to address the feedback in revision (S10, journal).
4.3. Cognitive engagement
The analyses of the pre- and post-study questionnaires revealed that the participants’ cognitive engagement improved significantly over 12 weeks (see Table 3, t =3.512, p =.000, d=1.12). The results indicated that the students expended great cognitive effort to peer feedback in this study.
The qualitative data also showed that the students engaged with peer feedback profoundly from cognitive perspective. We examined cognitive engagement from two perspectives: The depth of processing feedback (noticing or understanding feedback), and cognitive/metacognitive operations deployed by the students.
With regard to the noticing or understanding of feedback, it was not taxing for the participants to notice peer feedback, since their peers highlighted the errors explicitly. Likewise, as they expressed, they had little difficulty understanding the peer feedback and were able to figure out the underlying rationales. Furthermore, the teacher’s pedagogical practices appeared to facilitate their understanding of feedback. In the course, Hui motivated the students to communicate with each other to resolve the errors and problems in writing. Embedded in this dialogue- based learning context, the students engaged in discussions with peers, which facilitated negotiation and mutual understanding. In the case of S7, when having difficulty understanding some feedback points, she discussed with the peer to clarify her confusions and work out how to correct them. Similar comments were observed in S8 and S12
′
s in- terviews and writing journals.In terms of cognitive/metacognitive operations, the participants deployed various cognitive/metacognitive operations to address feed- back and enhance their revisions, which suggested that they experienced deep cognitive engagement. First, they used the strategy of prioritizing to revise their drafts. Specifically, having scrutinized the feedback, the
participants determined their revision focus, procedures, and strategies.
S1, for example, recounted his revision process, in which he outlined what errors that he prioritized:
Upon the receipt of feedback points, I went them through. I corrected the errors on article, verb tense, and sentence structure first, as they were the recurrent error types in my writing. After that, I rectified others (S1, interview).
Similarly, S3 and S6 experienced the conceptualizing stage, where they planned the revision process and established revision focus. They read their writing with feedback, classified feedback according to error types, and decided the errors that need to be prioritized. While S3 responded to the feedback on recurring errors first during revision, S6 gave priority to ruled-based errors and saved other errors later. Their revision experiences illustrated that the students were strategic learners and did not attend to feedback technically.
Another operation reported by eight students (e.g., S7, S8, S12, S15) was monitoring. In the revision, the participants kept an eye on their revision process and monitored the accuracy of their drafts. That is, they used the feedback to supervise their revision process and produced un- solicited revisions. When revising the first drafts in the thee tasks, S8 examined the feedback and identified other similar errors based on the provided feedback, which resulted in peer-initiated self-edits. She recalled in the journal, “With feedback on the verb tense, I detected three similar errors that were unidentified and revised them autono- mously.” S8
′
s practice indicated that she learned from the feedback and understood the metalinguistic rules, contributing to her autonomous revisions. In a similar vein, S15 made good use of peer feedback to identify the errors and implement self-editing revisions to enhance the quality of his writing:In the task 2, I received four feedback points on articles, so I realized that I misused them. With such an awareness, I detected the similar errors that were not highlighted by the peer independently (S15, interview).
According to the two participants’ accounts, they employed the monitoring strategy to help their revisions. With this strategy, they took a further step, employing the external feedback to detect and address errors on their own. In this sense, they appeared to internalize the conceptual knowledge conveyed by the feedback and expand their repertoire of language knowledge.
Additionally, the focal students (e.g., S2, S3, S10, S14) carried out ongoing self-reflection on their writing. In the three tasks, they reflected on what problems they had committed, why these problems occurred, and how to formulate appropriate solutions/strategies to overcome them and further their learning. After revision, S3 compared the first and revised drafts of writing, finding that he lacked topic sentence in each body paragraph and attributing such a problem to the negative transfer of Chinese writing style. Accordingly, he tried to tackle this problem in the following tasks:
During the planning stage, I listed the reasons to support the main idea.
Then, in composing the body paragraphs, I reminded myself to pay attention to topic sentences and formulated them based on the reasons that I had listed (S3, journal).
Having completed revisions in tasks 1 and 2, S10 went back to read through all the feedback points again and calculated the amount of peer feedback in different error types. Next, he summarized, “I was prone to making errors in attributive clauses” and further explained the reason “I was confused by attributive and adverbial clauses and failed to differ- entiate them.”
In addition, it appeared that teacher scaffolding had a positive in- fluence on the students’ cognitive engagement. The qualitative data showed how the teacher’s instructional activities contributed to engagement. First, the feedback training in providing peer feedback benefited the participants’ cognitive engagement. With the help of feedback training, the students could generate quality feedback, which
enabled them to realize their weaknesses and were ready to address the feedback to enhance their learning. For example, S3 expressed in the journal: “After the feedback training, I found that my peer not only held a serious attitude toward peer feedback but also detected my problems in writing precisely. Such feedback could improve my learning, which motivated me to engage with it proactively.” This point could also be reflected in S14
′
s reply in the interview.We received systematic training in peer feedback this time, so my peer was able to provide quality feedback, which really pointed out my problems in learning and stimulated my reflections. I was happy to engage with it deeply in that I could benefit from it (S14, interview).
Based on S14
′
s remarks, the training enabled the students to provide feedback with high quality pinpointing their peers’ problems in writing.When receiving such feedback, he engaged with it effortfully to reap its benefits.
Apart from training in peer feedback provision, the teacher also instructed the students how to cope with the feedback cognitively. This made them acquire some cognitive/metacognitive strategies and exer- cise them skillfully. As S8 remarked, although the teacher mainly centered on how to provide feedback, she informed them of several strategies such as self-reflection, and monitoring to address the feedback and improve their learning. In a similar vein, S1 reflected on how he revised his writing according to the feedback in the journal. With the teacher’s training, he acquired the strategy of prioritizing and used it in revision.
Before this study I was used to following feedback technically in revision.
However, instructed by the teacher, I acquired some strategies and learned that we should not do like that because of our limited time and energy. Thus, I gave priority to my recurring errors in revision in order to improve the efficiency of revision (S1, journal).
Finally, the participants ascribed their profound cognitive engage- ment to the supportive learning environment established by the teacher.
In this learning context, they felt positively, which contributed to their engagement with feedback. S3
′
s explanations in the interview were very typical.We communicated with our peers in a relaxing environment, so we did not experience anxiety and frustration about the errors and problems in writing. Instead, we felt very enjoyed, inspired, and interested to partic- ipate in peer feedback, which motivated us to invest our cognitive effort into addressing the feedback in revision (S3, interview).
5. Discussion
Unlike many prior studies (e.g., Cheng & Liu, 2022; Fan & Xu, 2020;
Koltovskaia, 2020), this study drew upon both quantitative and quali- tative data to explore Chinese secondary school EFL learners’ engage- ment with peer feedback based on three rounds of writing tasks in a real classroom, wherein the teacher enacted practices to support feedback.
The results indicated that due to teacher scaffolding, the students had positive affective, as well as extensive behavioral and cognitive engagement with peer feedback. This study expands our knowledge regarding how L2 learners engaged with peer feedback over time.
5.1. Affective engagement
From affective perspective, the quantitative results showed that the students perceived a conspicuous improvement in affective engagement spanning 12 weeks. The qualitative findings revealed that the focal participants generally held a positive attitude towards peer feedback and further explained their attitude from two perspectives. For feedback providers, peer feedback prompted them to foster self-reflection and learn from others, while they, as feedback receivers, could realize their errors and problems in writing. These merits of peer feedback are
reported in previous studies (e.g., Cao et al., 2019; Noroozi et al., 2020).
As Cao et al. (2019) argued, students play a dual role in performing peer feedback and they can benefit from both the two roles.
Furthermore, our findings showed that the participants attributed their positive orientation to teacher scaffolding. More specifically, feedback training and supportive learning environment contributed to affective engagement. As for feedback training, it helped boost the quantity and quality of peer feedback points. This result has been documented in prior investigations (e.g., Han & Xu, 2020; Rahimi, 2013), where training enabled L2 learners to produce a larger amount of quality feedback. To promote students’ proactive use of feedback, the information contained in the feedback should be of high quality, since quality feedback is the prerequisite for learners’ deep engagement with it (Latifi et al., 2023; Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022).
In terms of the latter, embedded in a friendly learning atmosphere, students could provide straightforward feedback and be receptive to it (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). As the prior literature suggested (e.g., Latifi et al., 2021; Noroozi, 2023), peer feedback should be a pedagogical activity occurring in a supportive context. Thus, teachers are encour- aged to be mindful of the classroom environment when implementing peer feedback so that students can benefit from it (Latifi et al., 2023;
Noroozi, 2023). In this sense, teachers need to construct beneficial instructional contexts for feedback to have favorable effects on learning, given that providing, seeking, receiving, and using feedback occur in contexts (Panadero & Lipnevich, 2022).
5.2. Behavioral engagement
The comparison of pre- and post-questionnaires suggested that our participants experienced a noticeable enhancement in students’ engagement in behavior. The qualitative findings agreed with the quantitative results, revealing that the focal students had effortful behavioral engagement across the three tasks. Moreover, their behav- ioral engagement was relevant to the teacher’s instructional practices. In our study, the instructor taught them some revision strategies. Consid- ering that our participants were secondary school students, they may not have many strategies at their disposal. In this situation, they needed to be scaffolded by the teacher in this regard. Supported by these revision strategies, the students engaged themselves with peer feedback exten- sively. In addition, the teacher established a culture of revision and valued the utilization of feedback in revision. The provision of feedback does not necessarily lead to the improvement in students’ writing, unless they attend to it in revision (Noroozi et al., 2016; Zhang & Hyland, 2018). As an integral part in writing, revision provides L2 learners with opportunities to interpret, analyze, and use feedback, empowering them to acquire the knowledge conveyed by feedback and transfer feedback to the following writing tasks (Yang & Zhang, 2023). In this sense, feed- back facilitates students’ learning through their engagement with revision.
Regarding revision strategies, the students employed external re- sources to deal with feedback and improve their writing, as the case found in Fan and Xu (2020) and Xu and Zhang (2022). More interest- ingly, this study further unveiled that the students used the outside re- sources in different approaches. Specifically, some students sought extra assistance not only to correct errors but also inform their learning. This means that these students went beyond task level. As such, they considered feedback as an affordance to improve their EFL writing and language learning, tapping into the long-term potential of feedback to further their study (Price et al., 2011; Yang et al., 2023). As posited by Yang and Zhang (2023), students had a profound behavioral engage- ment when realizing the benefits from feedback. In comparison, some participants merely took advantage of external help to address feedback and complete their revisions. Thus, their use of external resources were not learning-oriented and remained at a surface level. This finding indicated that they might view the purpose of feedback as text enhancement, instead of a learning opportunity.
5.3. Cognitive engagement
The quantitative data from the questionnaires revealed that there was a significant increase in cognitive engagement over time. The increased cognitive engagement was echoed by the qualitative findings that the focal participants displayed intensive cognitive engagement with peer feedback. The qualitative data found that the deep cognitive engagement was attributed to the teacher’s instructional activities. As the students explained, feedback training were beneficial for both feedback providers and receivers. To be specific, it enabled feedback providers to generate quality peer feedback and feedback receivers to understand how to attend to the feedback cognitively. With the quality feedback and more cognitive/metacognitive operations, it is not sur- prising that the participants engaged with peer feedback profoundly in cognition. This finding demonstrates the importance and necessity of conducting training in peer feedback (Latifi et al., 2023; Min, 2006, 2016).
Our study found that the participants did not feel much challenged to understand peer feedback, which was due to peer interaction encour- aged by the teacher. This finding indicates the importance of peer interaction in peer feedback activity and is aligned with what the pre- vious studies have found (Carless & Boud, 2018; Fan & Xu, 2020). The importance of peer interaction has been elaborated and emphasized in the prior literature (e.g., Carless & Boud, 2018; Zhu & Carless, 2018).
Specifically, this practice during peer feedback enables students’ mutual understanding, provides them with peer scaffolding, and activates various learning strategies. In this sense, our study lends credence to the suggestion that peer dialogues should be incorporated in the practice of peer feedback (Yu & Lee, 2016; Zhu & Carless, 2018).
In our study, the participants deployed a variety of cognitive and metacognitive operations to approach peer feedback and refine their drafts, which demonstrated that they experienced extensive cognitive engagement. This finding resonates with that of the previous studies (e.
g., Fan & Xu, 2020), in which L2 learners used different strategies to cope with peer feedback and regulate their writing and revision pro- cesses. By using these cognitive and metacognitive strategies, the par- ticipants were able to make decisions and take actions appropriately (Yang & Zhang, 2023; Zhang, 2022). The deployment of such cognitive and metacognitive operations suggested that the participants exerted their agency to regulate their mental effort to process feedback and promote revisions. As such, they appeared to be self-regulators rather than spoon-fed learners, shifting from other-regulation to self-regulation.
Following the recommendation in the previous studies (e.g., Cheng &
Liu, 2022; Ellis, 2010), we investigated Chinese EFL learners’ engage- ment with peer feedback in three dimensions. Our findings demonstrate that student engagement is a complicated process with three sub-constructs intertwined (Cheng & Liu, 2022; Fredricks et al., 2004).
In our study, affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement worked together to mediate how the students interpreted, analyzed, and incor- porated peer feedback, and how they made use of the learning oppor- tunities derived from the feedback to inform and further their learning.
Our study revealed how teacher scaffolding influenced L2 learners’ engagement. While we did not intend to unify how L2 teachers imple- ment feedback in their particular teaching contexts, the course teacher’s approach to feedback, as the participants explained, contributed to their proactive engagement. The result suggests the pivotal role of teacher scaffolding in promoting student engagement (Latifi et al., 2023; Nor- oozi et al., 2020). Specifically, the teacher in our study divided the feedback process into three phases, in which pre-feedback stage comprised feedback training and elaboration on writing assessment rubrics; during feedback, the teacher implemented peer feedback;
post-feedback activities included students’ self-reflections as further reinforcement. Throughout the feedback process, Hui trained the par- ticipants how to provide quality feedback, placed the students at the center, emphasizing their agentic use of feedback, and set up a
supportive learning environment, which facilitated students’ provision and reception of feedback.
Overall, the teacher’s feedback-related classroom activities enabled her students to produce effective feedback, promote their roles in the feedback process, and uptake feedback in a friendly learning atmo- sphere. Such feedback practices supported and scaffolded L2 learners, prompting them to engage with peer feedback profoundly and utilize feedback proactively to achieve its full potential for learning (Kerman et al., 2022). In other words, it seems that the teacher’s practices helped L2 learners address the challenges of peer feedback, as pointed out by several scholars (e.g., Latifi et al., 2023; Yu & Lee, 2016). Moreover, although teacher scaffolding or training for peer feedback has been widely discussed (e.g., Min, 2016; Rahimi, 2013), these studies mainly focused on the pre-feedback stage and explored how to scaffold students to provide helpful peer feedback. In comparison, the teacher’s support in our study was more systematic, going from pre-feedback to post-feedback stages. Additionally, it not only assisted feedback pro- viders generating quality feedback, but also helped the feedback re- ceivers attend to feedback. Thus, this study contributes to our understanding about how to facilitate L2 learners’ experiences in peer feedback activity as both feedback providers and receivers, and provides feedback practitioners with useful and important pedagogical information.
In summary, this study managed to enrich the existing literature in the following ways. First, different from the previous studies with one- off feedback (e.g., Fan & Xu, 2020; Zheng & Yu, 2018), our study adopted a developmental perspective on L2 learners’ engagement with peer feedback, finding the significant progress in the three dimensions of student engagement over 12 weeks. The results showed that student engagement is a mutable and dynamic construct and further revealed the developmental mechanisms of student engagement. Second, unlike prior studies focusing on undergraduate or postgraduate L2 learners (e.
g., Yu et al., 2019; Zhang & Hyland, 2022), our study examined Chinese secondary school EFL learners’ engagement with peer feedback, shifting the research attention from university contexts to school contexts.
Finally, much research in the current literature was qualitatively in nature, which restricted the generaliability of research findings (Zhang
& Hyland, 2018; Zheng et al., 2023). Our this study employed a
mixed-methods approach to explore student engagement. Such a design can be said to both increase the generaliability of the results and afford an in-depth and nuanced understanding of how individual students engaged with peer feedback.
6. Limitations and implications
Unsurprisingly, our study is not free from limitations. We examined the L2 learners’ engagement with peer feedback over time. However, due to the practical constraints, we included three rounds of writing tasks, which to some extent may hamper the generalization of our findings. Given the malleable and dynamic nature of student engage- ment, future studies should involve more rounds of writing tasks.
Additionally, our study recruited Year 11 students as the participants and selected the writing tasks from the past Gaokao. Given that the participants would take the Gaokao soon and the tremendous influence of this high-stake examination on them, we should be cautious that their substantial engagement could be attributed to teacher scaffolding alone.
It was also reasonable to speculate that their deep engagement may be associated with their motivation to achieve high scores in the Gaokao. As a result, future studies need to investigate alternative writing tasks with other age groups.
Despite the limitations, the findings from our study enable us to offer some useful pedagogical implications. In our study, the course instructor modeled how to orchestrate and conduct feedback-related sessions in L2 classrooms. By doing so, she made feedback as an enabling process, in which students were empowered to produce quality feedback and encouraged to interpret, internalize, and use feedback. Thus, her