Do Secondary L2 Writers Benefit from Peer Comments?

Abstract

The bulk of the studies conducted on the effectiveness of teacher comments and peer comments have been done with tertiary L2 learners, and conflicting findings have been obtained. While some found that peer comments were viewed with skepticism and induced little revision, others found that they did help learners to identify and raise awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in writing. This article reports on a study of the roles of teacher and peer comments in revisions in writing among secondary L2 learners in Hong Kong. Both quantitative and qualitative data were obtained and triangulated. The findings show that some learners incorporated high percentages of both teacher and peer comments, some incorporated higher percentages of teacher comments than peer comments, and others incorporated very low percentages of peer comments. While all learners favored teacher comments and saw the teacher as a figure of authority that guaranteed quality, only those who incorporated very low percentages of peer comments dismissed them as not useful. From the interviews with the learners, four roles of peer comments that contributed positively to the writing process were identified. Peer comments enhance a sense of audience, raise learners' awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, encourage collaborative learning, and foster the ownership of text. This suggests that even for L2 learners who are less mature L2 writers, peer comments do play an important part. The implications of the findings of this study for the writing teacher are also discussed.