The Effectiveness of Peer Feedback through Google Docs for Improving EFL Students’ Classroom Engagement and Writing Achievement

The present study sets to explore whether using peer feedback through Google Docs improves English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ classroom engagement. It also investigated the extent to which peer feedback through Google Docs improves EFL students’ writing achievement. Three groups of EFL students were involved in the study, namely control (N=23), experimental 1(N= 24), and experimental 2 (N=22). The control group received the treatment through the conventional writing course and the teacher read the writing task and provided feedback regarding the content, grammar, vocabulary, or punctuations. In addition to their regular in-class writing instruction, each student in the first experimental group was asked to choose a partner and email their drafts to them and the peers were required to provide feedback. In the second experimental group, the pairs provided the feedback through the Google Docs. One Way ANOVA was run to find any possible differences between the groups. Based on the findings, the second experimental group outperformed the other groups in their classroom engagement and writing achievement. The findings have implications for pedagogy as well as further research.