Page 61 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

TEACHING LANGUAGE FEATURES OF ACADEMIC WRITING 47
On the whole, the results of studies on the benefits of peer response in L2 composition instruction appears to be highly mixed. Although peer feedback may be more effective in the case of graduate students, this technique developed for L1 writers in the United States seems to be of questionable value when it comes to L2 learners.
Zhang's (1995) survey of ESL students found that all prefer teacher com- ments over peer feedback because ESL peer respondents are not always on the mark when it comes to suggesting revisions. Furthermore, Zhang noted that LI and L2 students may have distinctly different conceptualizations and priorities in revision (e.g., L2 writers are far more likely to respond to surface-level and morphological errors than to suggest substantiverevi- sion). Arndt (1993, p. 1 l l ) reported mismatches between teachers' and stu- dents' perceptions of the value of peer responses because students largely see them as unhelpful to both writers and respondents, who lack confidence as well as linguistic skills to be effective. However, "teachers tended to ig- nore or even be unaware of this factor, glibly assuming" peer responses would come "naturally."
Hyland (2002a) summed up the entire issue with the applicability and usefulness of peer response in L2 writingclasses: "The benefitsof peer response have been hard to confirm empirically, however, par- ticularly in ESL classrooms, and many studies have reported that stu- dents themselves doubt its value, overwhelmingly preferring teacher feedback" (p. 169).
Hyland also pointed out that generally ESL and NNS students perceive revision to mean error correction that can be culturally uncomfortable be- cause it entails "criticizing peers' work."
In L2writing instruction, however,teacher feedback on errors does seem to be effective. Experimental studies (Ashwell, 2000; Fathman & Whalley,
1990; Ferris, 1995) have demonstrated that correcting errors "universally (for every student and every composition) brought about improvement" in the quality of text "and at the same time led to a 44 per cent improvement in content expression" (James, 1998, p. 246). Furthermore, from a different perspective, learners want and expect teachers to correct their errors in al- most all cases. For example, Leki (1991) found that, without exception, stu- dents strongly preferred that teachers' correct their errors in writing. Thus, an important consideration in teaching L2 academic writing is not whether to correct textual errors and help students learn to edit their text, but howto deal with numerous and sometimes pervasive errors.
First and above all, the purpose of error correction is not for the teacher to edit the student text and, thus, unintentionally promote student reli- ance on the teacher. Much more importantly, the educational goal of error
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