CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1.          Rationale of the study

The past few years has witnessed dramatic changes in methods of teaching and learning English, and teaching and learning writing, among other three skills has undergone considerable renovation. The switch from “product oriented approach” to “process writing approach” is one of the most striking features in teaching writing. The “process writing” approach with its emphasis on learners’ achievement through multi processes of writing has been highly appreciated by both teachers and students applying it. Peer feedback, also known as peer - checking or peer-editing in which students play the role as editors to read and comment on their friends’ writing either in oral or written form or in both forms so that their peers can improve their drafts before handing the final ones to the teachers is one important aspect of this approach. 

Due to widely supported evidences of benefits that peer feedback activity can bring about to teaching and learning writing such as raising writers’ sense of audience, creating a cooperative learning environment, increasing text - ownership and improving students’ writing skills, peer written feedback has been exploited by many teachers and learners in all over the world, among whom teachers and students of the ED - HULIS are no exceptions.

Since peer written feedback activity was implemented in the ED- HULIS, a few studies have been carried out to investigate students’ competence in doing peer written feedback and some suggestions were also put forward so that students could make the most of this activity. However, those studies did not seem to give a thorough description of the situation because they tended to focus on only the act of giving without paying enough attention to the act of receiving peer written feedback whereas