Supporting Low-Proficiency L2 Learners Through Scaffolded Peer Feedback on L2 Writing Tasks

Introduction

Teaching writing as a productive language skill in a second language (L2) class is one of the most difficult tasks. Peer review is a writing instructional strategy that allows teachers to provide additional feedback to their students regarding vocabulary, word expressions, syntax, structure, and topic. The majority of L2 learners have difficulty with these local and global writing components and require additional assistance. Peer review also gives L2 students the chance to engage in meaningful conversation with other students, work actively with peers on ideas and material, and have critical conversations about their writing, including rewriting, cohesiveness, and word choice.

However, there are certain difficulties with peer review in the writing process. First, mistrust is the prevailing attitude (Alsehibany, 2021). Because some peer reviewers are viewed as less qualified than the writers, students felt that peer review was an unproductive classroom exercise (Saeli & Cheng, 2021). According to Salih (2013), grammar is typically the focus of peer review rather than substance, ideas, structure, organization, and coherence. However, because most students do not stay on task during the activity, teachers felt it had little effect on the quality of the writing (Brammer & Calera, 2007). Because of these limitations, some critics dispute the pedagogical efficacy of peer review in the L2 classroom. Nonetheless, several research has advanced the idea that peer review can be an effective teaching strategy in L2 writing (Bagheri & Rassaei, 2022; Kim, 2012; Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Min & Chiu, 2021; Saeli & Cheng, 2021). This is especially true when students receive adequate instruction on how to provide scaffolded peer feedback (SPF) (Alnasser, 2018; Alsehibany, 2021; Do, 2020; Leijen, 2017; Sippel, 2021; Zhao, 2018).