Effects of Anonymous and Non-anonymous Peer Review in Blended Learning on EFL Writing of Thai High School Learners

Abstract

Writing as a productive skill is generally perceived as a challenge for EFL learners. Peer feedback in writing, an activity through which learners provide and receive written or oral feedback on their writing either in pairs or small groups (e.g., Zhu, 2001; Liu & Hansen, 2002), is effective to improve learners’ writing ability. Therefore, this study aims to 1) investigate the difference in students’ writing ability after using feedback from anonymous and non-anonymous peer reviewers in a blended learning environment and 2) investigate the students’ attitudes toward anonymous and non-anonymous peer review in writing. One hundred thirty students Thai EFL high school learners participated in the pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research. Participants were divided into the anonymous group and the non-anonymous group. The participants were asked to write opinion paragraphs in different closed Facebook groups as the blended learning environment, where they also participated in anonymous and non-anonymous peer review activities. The research instruments were a writing pretest and a posttest, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. The analysis of the current findings revealed that the students’ writing ability in both groups was improved significantly. However, the improvement of writing ability between both groups was not statistically different. The current study also indicated that the students in both groups had a positive attitude toward peer review. However, the non-anonymous group reported a significantly better attitude toward peer review than the anonymous group. To conclude, peer review is effective in improving students’ writing ability, and students demonstrated a positive attitude toward peer review. However, further studies are needed to compare face-to-face peer review and electronic peer review in different contexts of learning.

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