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This essay aims to investigate four upper secondary school teachers’ perceptions of the use of peer review in English language teaching through a qualitative study. The theoretical framework of this essay includes both sociocultural theory and process theory of writing. The study itself consists of four semi-structured interviews with English teachers and the research questions aim to investigate these teachers’ motives for doing peer review, their practices involving peer review, and the perceived difficulties they have with using peer review in their language classrooms. The main findings show that while teachers think highly of peer review and believe it to be beneficial, peer review is still not an integrated method in three out of the four teachers’ practices. Some of the reasons for this included a perceived lack of time and opportunity to do peer review, as well as a lack of encouragement from their surroundings to use peer review in their classrooms. This study presents some teachers’ perceptions and practices of peer review and further discusses why teachers have these perceptions in relation to the essay’s theoretical background and previous research. Moreover, this study shows that peer review is highly thought of but rarely implemented in Swedish upper secondary schools and that peer review needs to be brought up more in the discussion of English writing if we want it to become an integrated part of English language teaching in Sweden.

This dissertation uses a mixed methods design to explore the process of EFL students' writing and peer review, setting up a paradigm of peer compared to self review, with teacher support. The findings that surfaced were identified in themes, with the most overarching theme being that the value of peer review came not from the actual feedback that the peers gave each other, but rather from the collaborative process of peer review. Students who were actively engaged in peer review often did not take the exact advice given, but the process of exchanging feedback followed by face-to-face discussion prompted them to think of new ideas of their own that they incorporated into their revisions. The following findings are related to this major one. (1) Both the writing proficiency of the student writers and the understanding they have of the feedback given have a symbiotic relationship and greatly affect how they apply feedback. In this study, students at higher writing proficiencies tended to include some abstract feedback, but regardless of the students' writing levels, their partners' were able to make revisions at their own level of proficiency. (2) Both peer and self reviewing students made revisions based more on their own inspirations and ownership of ideas rather than on the exact advice exchanged between partners. Often, students developed and incorporated ideas that appeared to be generated from the peer feedback and discussion, pointing to the significance of peer collaboration and discussion in the writing process. (3) Although previous studies have suggested that non-native speakers' tendency to give feedback on grammatical issues as a drawback, the in-depth examination here reveals a more positive perspective. Even when comments, such as regarding grammar, were rated as "incorrect," students were often able to make positive changes, such as rewording or reorganizing. The results brings insights to the impact of abstract feedback for varying proficiency levels, ownership of ideas, internalization of concepts, and interdependence in the collaborative peer review process within a Vygotskian framework of concept development and the ZPD. Implications for research, writing program administrators, and writing instructors are identified.

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Pre-writing strategies are conscious thoughts, actions, or behaviors used by writers when they plan before writing. Research in second language writing suggests that specific writing strategies related to writing purposes, audience, brainstorming, and organizing ideas are teachable and have a potential to improve the quantity and quality of writing produced by English as second language (ESL) learners. This study investigated the effects of computer-based pre-writing strategy training guided by procedural facilitation (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987) on intermediate ESL students' writing strategy use, writing quantity, and writing quality. A sequential mixed methods design was utilized with an initial quasi-experimental phase followed by semi-structured interviews. Forty-one participants from four intact intermediate-writing classes in an intensive English program participated in the quasi-experimental phase of the study. The classes were randomly assigned into two control and two experimental groups. The instructional modules for the control groups included writing instruction related to paragraph writing, essay writing, and opinion essays whereas the training modules for the experimental groups consisted of pre-writing strategies related to writing purposes, audience, and idea generation and organization. In addition, the experimental groups were trained to generate and organize ideas using Inspiration 6, an idea graphic organizer software program. The participants' writing performances and uses of pre-writing strategies prior to and after the training were analyzed. In addition, six semi-structured interviews conducted shortly after the post-test helped to illuminate the quantitative results. Results demonstrate a significant training impact on ESL students' pre-writing strategy use but fail to detect significant effects on the students' writing quantity and writing quality; however, a trend of improvement regarding the writing quality variables was detected among the strategy-trained students. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis revealed some similarities and differences of less experienced and experienced writers' writing processes and strategies. Overall, the findings suggest the complex interplay among the factors influencing student writing development including writing strategy use, writing processes, writing tasks, task conditions, their past writing experience, and their language proficiency.

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本研究旨於調查四個轉折連詞包括on the other hand、in/by contrast、 on the contrary 以及 nevertheless 在美國當代語料庫 (COCA) 以及學習者語料庫(ICNALE) 使用之不同情形及第二語學習者的使用錯誤分析。 本研究從美國當代語料庫 (COCA) 蒐集了四百篇文本(每個轉折連詞各一百篇)以及從學習者語料庫料庫 (ICNALE) 蒐集了一千八百篇學生的寫作，學生的文章分別來自台灣、香港、新加坡、菲律賓的大學生以及母語人士。本研究假設為:雖然四個轉折連詞被歸類為同一類轉折連詞 (adversative type)，各個轉折連詞的語義及用法應有所不同。本研究語料分析主要分為兩部分，第一部分分析各個轉折連詞中的篇章關係 (discourse relation)，調查四個轉折連詞上下文的不同反義的語義情況。第二部分聚焦於轉折連詞上下文中的主題分布 (topic categorization)，旨於發現是否特定轉折連詞出現於特定主題之內。 研究結果經由語料分析發現，四個轉折連詞有特定傾向的篇章關係和主題分布。在學習者語料庫中，本研究發現第二語言學習者比起母語人士，使用更多轉折連詞於寫作中，特別是on the other hand 以及nevertheless。台灣學生以及英語為第二外語學生在上下中，常將on the other hand的篇章關係使用為in addition 之用法。在連詞nevertheless方面，雖然學生使用頻率較高，但多為誤用情況，顯示出學生對於該轉折連詞的不熟悉情況。而in/by contrast 和on the contrary 皆不常出現於第二語言學習者和母語人士的寫作中。本研究最後提出在英語教學上的建議：在課堂上教導轉折連接詞時，應需加強語意以及上下文方面的探討，並訓練學生正確文句之間的邏輯關係。 / The present study adopts corpus analysis to investigate four adversative connectives (ACs), including on the other hand, in/by contrast, on the contrary, and nevertheless in the native corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and in the leaner corpus, the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English, (ICNALE). The comparison of the two corpora and the common misuse by L2 learners are also presented. The data comprise of 400 texts in COCA (100 texts for each AC) and 1800 essays written by students in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and by native speakers in ICNALE. The research hypothesis is that although the four ACs are classified in the same ‘adversative’ type, their meanings and uses are different from one another. The adoption of corpus helps to find the patterns of each AC. The data are analyzed from two perspectives: one is the discourse relation while the other is topic categorization. The discourse relation refers to the relations of the preceding and following co-texts of the AC. The topic categorization, on the other hand, aims at finding if there are specific topics that are frequently occurred with certain ACs and if these topics are consistent before or after the occurrences of the Cs. The findings confirm the prediction that by analyzing the data in COCA, each AC exists in certain discourse relations and topics. The present study finds that different from native speakers, L2 learners often use on the other hand as ‘addition’ yet a great number of uses of nevertheless are viewed as misuse. As for on the contrary and in/by contrast, both native speakers and L2 learners seldom apply the ACs in their writing. The present study also provides the common misuse patterns in ESL/EFL students’ writing. It is hoped that the findings have implications for teachers and learners to be aware of the differences of ACs.