Reaction Essay on “Peer vs. Teacher Corrective Feedback and its Effect on Grammar” by Miren Garcia Iriarte

The role of Corrective Feedback (CF) in second language teaching and learning is important as a tool to learn English as a foreign language (EFL) (Bitchener, 2008).

One study in relation to this is the “Peer vs. Teacher corrective feedback and its effect on grammar” by Miren Garcia Iriarte. The results of this investigation showed that peer feedback can be more effective than teacher feedback. Peer feedback resulted in 70% of students showing improvement after giving and receiving it, while teacher feedback produced an improvement in only 40% of students. This study showed that peer feedback was more effective than teacher feedback in both groups and exercises. Students performed better after peer feedback on both grammar tests, always improving their results afterwards. After teacher feedback, they improved less and even worsened in one occasion thus this study suggest that peer feedback may be a useful tool that could easily be implemented in high schools and could result in an enhancement of the grammatical accuracy of students. In addition, the study implies that peer feedback could be included as a complement for grammar activities in order to improve the uptake of grammatical aspects and to enhance and ease the learning process.

I believe that when it comes to correcting errors of learners, feedback is really crucial in second language (L2) learning and language pedagogy. I agree with the concept that in both structural and communicative approaches to language teaching, feedback can be viewed as a means of fostering learners’ motivation and ensuring linguistic accuracy.

I strongly agree that students will benefit from both giving and receiving feedback either from peers or from teachers. To the said study above by Iriarte, peer pressure could this way turn into a positive asset that could benefit the learning process in language, however, I also believe that through an accurate and timely feedback from teachers, learners can also have an environment that supports a growth mind-set.

The role of peer and teacher feedback should be a collective effort in improving learners’ accuracy in grammar and increasing their motivation in learning English language effectively. There can be changes on the effectiveness of both sources of feedback, but as stated in the study, possible reasons for this change are the influence of personal and contextual factors of the learners. Like Dekeyser (1993) stated, CF can interact with learner characteristics and contextual circumstances. I think and I believe that the best possible solution for these reasons is the role of a teacher as a motivator and a facilitator. As teachers correct the errors of his learners, it should be in a way that learning the language is in the students’ interests at heart. Correcting them should only be done in situations that allow them to grow as language learners. On the other hand teacher as a facilitator in peer error correction should guide and scaffold his students first with enough knowledge and practices in using English language before letting them be the in charge of correcting their peers to learn collaboratively and productively.