The effects of providing peer feedback on learners’ genre awareness in English as a foreign language business letter writing

Despite the important role of the genre awareness in facilitating the effective communication in the global business context and the need to teach and practice writing for various social purposes, there was scant classroom-based research on effects of providing peer feedback on EFL learners’ genre awareness in business writing for fulfilling the particular communicative purpose. This study examined whether student reviewers could improve their genre awareness in business letter writing by providing peer feedback to other students’ writings at varying levels. Sixty business English majors, taking the business writing course for 1 year under the tutelage of the same instructor, participated in the current study. They were randomly assigned to the experimental group who reviewed the students’ drafts at different levels (high, medium and low) and gave written comments and the control group who received no treatment but did self-revision. Both groups followed the genre-specific evaluation criteria during peer feedback and self-revision. Repeated-measures ANOVA on the two groups’ writing performances at different timepoints (pretest, immediate posttest, transfer posttest and delayed transfer posttest) demonstrated that the participants in the experimental group had better performance than those in the control group at the transfer posttest as well as the delayed transfer posttest. Moreover, providing weakness comments on both the low-quality and the medium-quality drafts had significant effects on their own writing quality at the subsequent tests, whereas providing strength feedback on the high-quality drafts had statistically significant impacts on their own writing quality at the immediate posttest and the delayed transfer posttest. However, multiple linear regression analyses demonstrated that only offering weakness comments to the medium-quality drafts could effectively predict the reviewers’ overall writing quality in the immediate posttest, the transfer posttest, and the delayed transfer posttest. Tentative research and pedagogical implications of the findings were discussed.