The role of peer correction and teacher feedback in the improvement of writing skills in high school students

Abstract

Abstract: This research aimed to analyze the role of peer correction and teacher feedback in the improvement of writing skills and their efficacy for the improvement of morphological, semantic, and syntactic errors in EFL writing. The participants of this study were twenty-five students in their third year of high school from a public high school located in Quito, Ecuador. During this research, a mixed approach was used, that is, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed to analyze, compare and contrast the information. The instruments used to gather the data were a pre-test, a post-test, six writing compositions, a rubric, a checklist, and a survey. The main results revealed that the teacher´s feedback and the students' corrections were both effective, but students preferred the teacher's feedback. Moreover, it was established that the most frequent written errors were morphological, followed by syntactic ones. Finally, it was concluded that EFL students prefer teacher feedback, but they do not minimize the importance and effectiveness of peer correction.