THE IMPACT OF WRITTEN PEER CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON PRE-INTERMEDIATE IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE

The state of effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) on learners’ command of a second language writing has always been a heated debate. Although many scholars harbored deep-seated doubts regarding the usefulness of WCF in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Truscott, 1996), it was settled from mid 1990s onward that written corrective feedback, as a whole concept, cast positive influence on learners’ performance (Ferris, 2004).Yet what type of feedback, what level of feedback, and whose feedback might have the largest degree of influence on L2 learners’ writing are yet to be determined. As an attempt in this regard, this quasi-experimental study was designed to investigate the impact of providing written corrective feedback by peers on writing performance. The researchers homogenized 46 pre-intermediate learners in a private English institute in Tehran, Iran, and assigned them into two groups of 23: the peer feedback group, which were required to provide peer feedback, and the teacher feedback group, which received teacher feedback. In a 20-session course, participants handed in 16 paragraphs, and the feedbacks were given based on a checklist designed by the researchers. The t-testanalysis of the post-test results revealed a meaningful statistical difference between the two groups, and the comparison of means reported a higher rate of performance improvement on peer-feedback group.