The Contrastive Study of Three Types of Online Feedback in the ESL Writing Class

This study contrasts the effects of online teacher feedback, online peer feedback and online teacher-peer combined feedback in teaching English writing to college freshmen and their attitudes towards different types of feedback. Thirty students are divided into three groups and receive respective types of feedback in a ten weeks' experiment. The study findings reveal that although all the three types of feedback can improve the writing performance, the online teacher-peer combined feedback proves to be the most effective one, followed by teacher feedback. Though peer feedback contributes least effectively among the three, it can be used as a supplement to teacher feedback. Results of questionnaire also show that the combination of teacher and peer feedback is highly valued and positively received by the subjects.