Adding to the grammatical correction discussion....Peer reviews

After reading the articles assigned this week, I remembered a relavent article I came across for my research about peer revisions in ESL writing. Cassia and Johnson (1994) looked at peer revisions, a method argued by many of their sources to be beneficial for L1 students, and investigated it’s usefulness in L2 writing classes. Within a class of 12 non-native English speakers, students were broken into pairs and asked to give feedback and their peer’s paper, from comprehension to grammar. The researchers then looked at the final drafts of the students to see how often the feedback was used. Finally, the researchers conducted post-interviews to ask the students not only how beneficial the peer reviews were to them personally.

The results of the study showed that 53% of the time students incorporated their peer’s comments. Ten percent of the time, students did not revise a given part of their texts even though it had been discussed in the peer review. Interestingly, 37% of the time, students revised parts of their essays that had not been discussed in the peer reviews, indicating the students picked up other techniques for writing that they saw in other students’ papers. =All but two of the students reported that peer reviews were helpful, and those two students said that it was a “boring” assignment.

Cassia and Johnson conclude that peer feedback is effective because it allows for students to actively analyze and learn their mistakes and other students’ mistakes, as opposed to being passively told by their teachers which revisions to make.

I thought it was interesting that none of the authors from this week’s readings cited this study. The research contributes valuable data to the field of research on grammatical corrective feedback in that it is one of the few that indicate success, and it approaches corrective feedback with a new method - - peer review. This unique approach responds to Ferris’ call for researchers to take grammatical corrective feedback research a step further (2004).

While I believe this research is valuable, Truscott would likely argue that even though the students found the corrective feedback helpful from their peers, students may not be the best judges of what learning style is best for them, thus the study does not sufficiently promote the use corrective feedback. I however, would disagree. While post-interviews may seem skewed because of the self-reporting of students, the success of the peer review was also indicated by the amount of students who chose, with their own free will, to incorporate their peer’s suggestions and many times take a step further to correct other things they have learned from talking with their peers about corrections. This shows that the students not only learned but also applied the corrections.

Cassia, O. M. and Johnson, K. E. (1994). Peer review negotiations: Revision activities in ESL writing instruction. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Quarterly, 28(4), 745-769.

Ferris, D. (2004). The ‘‘grammar correction’’ debate in L2 writing: Where are we, and where do we go from here? (and what do we do in the meantime . . .?) . Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, p. 49-62.

Truscott, J. (1996). The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46, 327-369.

Genre Approach Applied to Oral L2 Learning

This week I was thinking about genres as a teaching method, and I came across an article that might apply the genre method to oral communication.

Friedenberg and Bradley (1981) suggest a method for teaching English quickly, focusing on communication skills for basic survival. To teach them focused topics effectively, the researchers explore the adaptation of the of micro-counseling approach. This is a method that has been used to teach counselors specific techniques through the use of role playing in the classroom. Friedenberg and Bradley suggest using the micro-counseling approach to include attention to vocabulary, sentence structure, and culture to allow ESL students to practice basic survival and vocational skills.

This approach doesn’t require the students to be literate, which makes this slightly different than the genre approach discussed in this week's readings. However it is similar in that the teacher encourages the student to consider their audience, message, and delivery before crafting their discourse. Instead of writing genres, the class is practicing speaking genres. The results of this study demonstrate that students learn by doing, therefore if they never practice a particular type of conversation (e.g. words to use when in a restaurant, or words to use in a job interview) they may never master them.

This is similar to genre approach that in that students are encouraged to consider their ends and create the means. Hyland defines the genre approach as “purposeful, socially situated responses to particular contexts and communities” (2003, p. 17). Using role-playing, the dialogue allows the students to continuously craft responses and the conversation changes. This idea of using social realities is also encouraged in the written genre approach.

The one aspect that Friedenberg and Bradley cover that Hyland does not is a specific example of how this approach could be used effectively in the classroom. I would have liked to see a sample of how genre writing could be used in the classroom from Hyland (an example like So gave) however I understand that this article was meant to just introduce genre approach. Also, Hyland mentions, “genres are not overbearing structures which impose uniformity on users” (2003, p. 23). This might be a little more difficult to translate to the role-playing strategy that Friedenberg and Bradley suggest using because the teacher is required to create a scenario for the students to work within. Their language choice may change depending on how the conversation goes, but it is still within a construct that might not be compatible with Hyland’s idea of genre.

Personally, I agree with Friedenberg and Bradley’s approach. When I was taking a foreign language student in high school, I remember using the role-playing strategy to try to sharpen skills and language. I personally feel like it was an effective way to get students to think critically about what they are saying and why they are saying it. However, to enhance their argument, I wish the authors would have conducted original research instead of using the research of others (such as Savignon 1972).

Friedenberg, J. and Bradley, C. H. (1981). Communication skills for the adult ESL student: A microcounsling approach. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Quarterly, 15(4), 403-411.

Hyland, K. (2003). Genre-based pedagogies: A social response to process. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(1), 17-29.