Online Peer Feedback Tasks: Training for Improved L2 Writing Proficiency, Anxiety Reduction, and Language Learning Strategies

Abstract

As the Internet has created a rich and supportive environment for peer-to-peer review activities, this study seeks to better understand the incidence of an online-delivered peer- to-peer feedback process on levels of student second language writing anxiety, their awareness and use of appropriate Language Learning Strategies, and ultimately on their performance. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative data drawn from students’ pre/post- intervention essays with quantitative data drawn, on the one hand, from those essays and, on the other, from their response to such surveys as Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and Cheng’s (2004) Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (L2WAI), this study measures changes in writing accuracy and fluency scores, levels of students’ anxiety, and their use of anxiety-reducing and performance-enhancing learning strategies. Forty-one South Korean English Education majors attending a compulsory English writing course were recruited. Results reveal that students involved in a semester-long, trained P2P feedback process improved their use and awareness of learning strategies, experienced decreasing levels of second language writing anxiety, and produced overall better writing assignments. Building on studies of the same sort of peer-to-peer feedback process (Cassidy & Bailey, 2018; Hahn, 2016), these results serve as an occasion to reflect on how that process itself, when delivered online, serves as an effective platform for training students in the use of the sorts of learning strategies that decrease learner anxiety and improve performance.