Author Description

Peer feedback is a significant element of the processapproach of teaching second language writing. Public attitudes toward thisteaching technique basically cannot reach a consensus. Compared with teacherassessment, which is a traditional approach to evaluating students' academicperformance, it seems that peer feedback has progressed as a brand new form ofassessment in English language teaching, but it has actually been developed forcenturies but not been emphasized. As a result, the research in thisdissertation attempts to find whether peer feedback activities in Englishwriting classrooms in China's universities help non-English major studentsenhance their writing level, especially composition writing, and also changetheir attitudes toward teacher assessment and peer feedback. In a broader view,it is crucial to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each assessmentapproach as well as find out whether student improvement brought about peerfeedback activities is general or particular aspects. The participants of theresearch were 20 sophomores from Henan Polytechnic University who major in Lawand did not have any training in how to execute peer feedback activities. Theywere under investigation with instruments of assessment, questionnaire, andtests. The findings from the research data indicate that peer feedback canassist participants achieve higher scores in the writing section of collegeEnglish subject examinations, promote students' learning enthusiasm, and offerthem opportunities to develop meticulous academic writing; nevertheless, peerfeedback is fundamentally not reliable and has a number of definite flaws as itasks students to be able to have a sufficiently high English proficiency tojudge their peers' work.