Page 60 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

46 CHAPTER 3
voted to descriptions, analyses, and approaches to correcting errors made by speakers of approximately 20 languages.
Although similar types of errors can have numerous causes, it may not be particularly important to figure them out simply because causes of learner problems with particular linguistic features can be highly numerous. How- ever, for academic writers, learning to identify and correct their own errors is essential. In composition and writing instruction, peer editing is often employed with the stated learning goal of providing student writers a more realistic audience than only the instructor, developing learners' editing skills, and establishing a social context for writing (Ferris & Hedgcock,
1998; Johnson, 1989a; Reid, 1993, 2000a, 2000b). However, peer editing (also called peer response), as a technique for teaching writing, was originally created for NS students who wrote in their L1 and were more socially and culturally open to the idea of reading and responding to their classmates' writing than a majority of L2 writers socialized in collectivist cultures, which place a great deal of emphasis on group harmony and cohesiveness and the importance of saving face (Carson & Nelson, 1994, 1996; Hinkel, 1999b; Hyland,2002a;seealsoSilva,1997;Ferris&Hedgcock, 1998).
Although some researchers of L2 writing believe that the benefits of peer editing outweigh the disadvantages and that peer response to writing can be made effective when used with care, others have voiced concerns about the effectiveness of this technique in light of the fact among various cultural groups, harmony has to be maintained almost at any cost (Carson & Nelson,
1996). For instance, Carson and Nelson (1994) reported the unease of Chi- nese L2 learners when working on peer response tasks and their reluctance to provide honest feedback. In fact these authors noted that in this case, learners' responses are likely to reflect a need for positive ingroup relation- ships than a need to improve their peer's writing.
Several studies of peer editing/response in L2 writing classes reported ad- ditional complications (Connor &Asenavage, 1994; Grabe &Kaplan, 1996; W. Zhu, 2001). For example, Nelson and Murphy (1993) found that in many cases, NNS students "tended not to act upon their peers' comments" and "in fact, writers may actually weaken their drafts by incorporating peer com- ments" (p. 140). These authors suggested a variety of strategies for conduct- ing ESL peer response groups that rely on instruction, teacher modeling, awareness, and practical training for students to provide appropriate and useful comments, as well as audio- and videotaping peer interactions for sub- sequent review, with the goal of improving peer feedback on classmates' writ- ing. Similarly, Tsui and Ng (2000) found that "teacher comments were more favored by most students than peer comments and induced more revisions" because teacher comments were more specific, "were able to explain what the problems were, and were better able to make concrete suggestions for revi- sion" (pp. 165-166). Tsui and Ng's study also proposed a number of tech- niques to train students to make peer response more effective.
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