The current classroom environment is filled with expectations for both teacher and student but is often lacking in time. Skolverket (2011) outlines ambitious goals such as developing students’ critical thinking abilities, adapting teaching to each student’s individual needs, and encouraging students to actively take part in the development of their own educational process, to name just a few. It is crucial to develop and use techniques that aid in attaining these objectives. Peer response could be such a tool. There is an abundance of research which demonstrates how effective it is, but there is also a great reluctance on the part of teachers and students alike to employ it in the classroom. This could be due in part to the idea that learners lack the necessary knowledge to correct and give feedback. However, this and other criticisms directed against peer feedback could be alleviated through deliberate formal peerresponse training. Most of today’s research on this topic seems to focus on English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) classrooms in the U.S.A and Asia, with little work having been done in the Swedish context. Also lacking are investigations regarding peer response in grammar testing, since most of the research emphasizes essay writing. This paper aims to add to the body of existing research on prompted peer response by examining its application in English classrooms in Sweden. To do so, two secondary school English classes in Sweden are tested by means of an abbreviated version of Gan’s (2011) prompted peer response model. More specifically, this paper’s objective is to explore if prompted peer response leads to improvements in grammar (operationalized in this case as reducing grammatical errors in a grammar test) when compared to unprompted peer response. In addition, this paper intends to explore whether peer response can possibly produce any additional rewards and what those could be. The results for this study seem promising. The primary results of this paper support the existing research in this area that prompted peer response leads to a reduction in student’s grammatical errors. Perhaps more importantly, the results suggest that it also aids students in developing a progressive approach to peer response which ultimately can lead to students developing learning strategies and self-reflection over their own learning process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-166208 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Melanson, Michael |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för språkdidaktik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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