专门用途英语教学中的教师反馈与同侪反馈的比较研究

A Comparative Study of Peer Feedback and Teacher Feedback in the Context of ESP Teaching

自20世纪80年代以来,同侪反馈在各个学科的教学研究中,持续获得高度关注。在EFL写作教学中,同侪反馈已经逐步成为与传统的教师反馈并驾齐驱的主要写作反馈方式之一。现有的关于教师反馈与同侪反馈的比较研究,多聚焦于通用英语的教学,对专门用途英语的教学关注较少。本研究以剑桥商务英语证书考试写作部分的教学为例,试图分析在专门用途英语教学中,教师反馈和同侪反馈对学生的作文修改的影响的异同,同时调查中国学生对上述两种反馈方式所持态度的异同。本研究以49名商务英语写作课的学生为研究对象,以问卷调查和深度访谈为主要研究方法,采用定性和定量分析相结合的方式进行数据分析。研究结果表明,教师反馈与同侪反馈在专门用途英语写作修改的有效性和修改层次方面,存在明显的差异。学生对待同侪反馈的态度,在亲身体验同侪反馈后,有较大的改变。本研究对专门用途英语写作教学中的反馈方式的选择,有较大的启发意义。

Peer feedback has gained increasing academic attention in the past several decades and evolved into a prominent form of feedback in various disciplines. In the field of EFL, a considerable num-ber of empirical studies have been carried out to compare peer feedback and the more traditional teacher feedback from various perspectives. These studies have predominantly focused on the teaching of general English, albeit in different educational contexts. There is a dearth of research on the comparative effects of these two forms of feedback in the context of English for Specific Purpose (ESP) teaching. The present study aims to fill the research gap by investigating the effects of both teacher feedback and peer feedback on students’ ESP writing development in a 16-week BEC writing course. 49 second-year undergraduate students from a Chinese university participated in the present study and were classified into the teacher feedback group and peer feedback group respectively. A questionnaire was administered to both groups to gather data concerning their attitude toward the two forms of feedback while Paired-Sample t Test was performed to ascertain the effects of teacher feedback and peer feedback on the improvement of their ESP writing ability. The results indicate that while students were generally willing to make use of both two forms of feedback, they tended to attach lopsided importance to them. Although both general English learners and ESP learners preferred teacher feedback over student feedback, ESP learners’ attitude towards peer feedback could be positively affected by hands-on experience of it. Furthermore, teacher feedback and peer feedback led to significant differences in the writing corrections students subsequently made. The present study has practical implications for ESP teaching and curriculum design, particularly the adjustment of feedback mechanism of ESP writing programs.