Developing students' writing skill through peer feedback

• Author: Osman Osmani - Fikret Pajaziti - Lavdim Terziu
• Position: University of Prishtina, Kosovo - Kosovo Pedagogical Institute, Kosovo - International American Academy of Kosova, Kosovo
• Pages: 385-394

385

Vol. 3 No. 1

May, 2017

Balkan Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria

ISSN 2410-759X

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

Developing students’ writing skill through peer feedback

Osman Osmani

University of Prishtina, Kosovo

Fikret Pajaziti

Kosovo Pedagogical Institute, Kosovo

Lavdim Terziu

International American Academy of Kosova, Kosovo

Abstract

People in general, and students in particular cannot run away from writing since writing is

a skill they do every day. In pursuance of helping students to be good writers, teachers have

to help them. Thus, the teacher must strive to fi nd ways to teach writing in an effi cient way.

And one such eff ective way is close related to how students give feedback to their peers. The

current study is designed to examine the issue of peer feedback in the context of the vocational

upper secondary school in Viti, Kosovo, during a four-month period in 2017. It is an action

research which aims to evaluate students’ progress while writing paragraphs in descriptive

genre as their homework assignment. Twenty-two high school senior students participated in

the study, but only nine of them were the sample. A er analyzing the data collected through

homework assignments, students’ improvement in writing was evident. Using this technique,

they produced be er writing. Once they got used with giving and receiving feedback from their

peers, they became eager to share and read each other’s papers. Additionally, this technique

kept students focused in learning, which is ultimately the goal of every teacher. With reference

to dynamics of writing, it was organized, effi cient, standardized in the sense of coherence

and cohesion, proper use of paragraphs, grammar, punctuation, and so on. Furthermore, peer

feedback technique was found very eff ective and productive in improving writing skill. To

recapitulate, we confi rm that this technique not only yields be er writing to students, but it

has also a useful implication for EFL secondary school teachers in the Republic of Kosovo.

Keywords: Feedback, Peer feedback, Writing skills, Writing process, Descriptive paragraphs.

Introduction

Writing is one of the greatest skill. It is said that writing process is like a road map

because students' thoughts and actions can be monitored through this skill, i.e.,

writing skill. Mastering this skill is of signifi cant importance since writing is one of

the ways of sharing information, thoughts, experiences, or ideas, between ourselves

and the others (Cahyono, 2009: 16).

The topic of this research is, “Developing students’ writing skill through peer

correction/feedback” where by carrying out this research process, the improvement

of students’ performance regarding writing is expected to be achieved. By doing it,

we wish to make changes for be er in writing. All in all, changes are experienced by

us every day, and changes have always shown be er results while applied. Therefore,

the goal of this project expects to enlighten the benefi ts of these changes.