Peer Review in Writing Classes : Is It Viable with Japanese Students?

With the emergence of the process-oriented approach, the peer review has become an important component of both L1 and L2 writing instruction. However, while there are numerous studies supporting the benefits of peer reviews, past studies report that Asian students have negative reactions to peer reviews because of their prior teachercentered educational backgrounds. The purpose of the present study is to investigate Japanese university students\u27 perceptions of peer reviews in EFL composition classes. During a half-year course, students were required to write two multiple-draft essays. After the completion of the first draft, peer review was conducted, mainly concerned with content and organization. At semester\u27s end, students (n=46) were asked in anonymous questionnaires: 1) the degree of interest they took in the peer review process in general, 2) their opinions of the effectiveness of peer reviews in the process of revising their own work, 3) their attitudes and feelings while reviewing their peers\u27 drafts, and 4) their opinions about peer reviews as being beneficial to becoming critical writers. The questionnaires included both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. For processing the students\u27 subjective explanations, the output was content-coded into message unit categories. The results show that 89% of the students had positive perceptions of the peer review process in general. The most important contributing factor to the results seemed to be the fact that students had great curiosity about other students\u27 English compositions. The results also revealed that students believed they benefited a great deal from peer reviews when revising their drafts because peer reviews gave additional insights into their drafts that they would otherwise not have had. Mangelsdorf\u27s (1992) finding of student skepticism of peer ability to criticize was not a prevailing factor in this study. Furthermore, students believed in general that by reviewing peers\u27 drafts they developed stronger critical ability in regard to their own writing. In contrast to the overall positive reactions, the majority of students expressed negative feelings when they performed as a critic. As reported by Sengupta (1998), students stressed a reluctance to criticize fellow students and a lack of confidence in being good critics. In short, students had positive views toward receiving criticism but not toward giving it