Education, Faculty of
Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Li, Wentao
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
Building on the socio-cognitive theoretical perspective of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1995, 2002, 2013), the current exploratory qualitative study investigates how a group of college-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in China apply socio-cognitive sources to self-regulate their revision behaviours as they receive and self-reflect on peer feedback and plan for their second draft writing. The whole learning process is mediated by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Data analyses were based on students’ initial and revised writing samples, revision worksheets, and semi-structured interviews. Four significant findings were generated: 1) Peer feedback covered both content and language issues but was more concerned with content issues; 2) Students decided to incorporate most of the peer feedback into their revision, whereas ignored those when they disagreed with their peers; 3) When peer comments were too general and confusing, or contradictory among multiple reviewers, students still made subsequent revisions through seeking clarification and advice from peers, collecting information from the internet, and checking e-dictionary, Grammarly, and academic references; 4) Students benefited from the self-regulated revision process across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge-level through receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan. Findings suggest that receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback forms useful socio-cognitive sources that could shape and trigger students’ self-regulated revision behaviours. The study yields instructional guidance for writing teachers to incorporate ICT-mediated peer feedback and revision planning tasks into their classroom teaching to help students achieve self-regulated revision and become masters of their EFL writing and revision practices.
EXPLORING REVISION AS A SELF-REGULATED PROCESS IN EFL WRITING by Wentao Li TEFL Certificate, University of Toronto, 2022 B.A., Northeast Normal University, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Teaching English as a Second Language) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2022 © Wentao Li, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: Exploring revision as a self-regulated process in EFL writing submitted by Wentao Li in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language Examining Committee: Dr. Ling Shi, Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC Supervisor Dr. Guofang Li, Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Ann Anderson, Professor, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Building on the socio-cognitive theoretical perspective of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1995, 2002, 2013), the current exploratory qualitative study investigates how a group of college-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in China apply socio-cognitive sources to self-regulate their revision behaviours as they receive and self-reflect on peer feedback and plan for their second draft writing. The whole learning process is mediated by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Data analyses were based on students’ initial and revised writing samples, revision worksheets, and semi-structured interviews. Four significant findings were generated: 1) Peer feedback covered both content and language issues but was more concerned with content issues; 2) Students decided to incorporate most of the peer feedback into their revision, whereas ignored those when they disagreed with their peers; 3) When peer comments were too general and confusing, or contradictory among multiple reviewers, students still made subsequent revisions through seeking clarification and advice from peers, collecting information from the internet, and checking e-dictionary, Grammarly, and academic references; 4) Students benefited from the self-regulated revision process across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge-level through receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan. Findings suggest that receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback forms useful socio-cognitive sources that could shape and trigger students’ self-regulated revision behaviours. The study yields instructional guidance for writing teachers to incorporate ICT-mediated peer feedback and revision planning tasks into their classroom teaching to help students achieve self-regulated revision and become masters of their EFL writing and revision practices. iv Lay Summary This exploratory qualitative study examines how Chinese college-level EFL students self-regulate their revision behaviours as they reflect on ICT-mediated peer feedback. Data includes revision worksheets, students writing and revision drafts, and semi-structured interviews. Findings show that receiving ICT-mediated peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback are useful socio-cognitive sources that could shape students’ self-regulated revision behaviours. The study provides teaching implications of incorporating ICT-mediated peer feedback into the EFL writing and revision process to develop students’ self-regulated revision skills. v Preface This thesis is an original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Wentao Li. The data used in this study were collected in partial fulfillment of the program: Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language, in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, under the supervision of Professor Ling Shi, supported by the expertise and feedback from Professor Guofang Li (committee member) and Professor Ann Anderson (committee member). This study has undergone an ethical review process approved on February 16th, 2021, by the University of British Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board. The Human Ethics Certificate # H21-00163 for “Exploring EFL learners’ self-regulated process of revision” is valid until February 2022. vi Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ............................................................................................................................... iv Preface .............................................................................................................................................v Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................. xiii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... xiv Dedication .................................................................................................................................. xvii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Research Background of the Study ....................................................................................... 1 1.2 Objectives and Research Questions of the Study ................................................................. 2 1.3 Significance of the Study ...................................................................................................... 2 1.4 Outline of the Thesis ............................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................6 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 2.2 Self-Regulated Writing and Revision ................................................................................... 6 2.3 Peer Feedback and Self-Regulated Revision Process ........................................................... 8 2.4 Self-Regulated Revision Process via Peer Feedback: A Socio-Cognitive Perspective ........ 9 2.4.1 Revision as a Cognitive Goal-Driven Self-Regulated Process ...................................... 9 2.4.2 Revision as a Socio-Cognitive Peer-Scaffolded Self-Regulated Process .................... 10 2.4.3 Revision as an Integrated Cognitive and Socio-Cognitive Self-Regulated Process .... 13 2.5 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................................... 17 vii Chapter 3: Review of Previous Empirical Studies ....................................................................18 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 18 3.2 Enhancing Self-Regulated Revision Process Through Peer Feedback ............................... 18 3.3 Students’ Use of Peer Feedback in Self-Regulated Revision Process ................................ 21 3.4 Self-Regulated Revision Process in Online Learning Environments ................................. 24 3.5 Research Gaps and the Current Study ................................................................................ 26 3.6 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 4: Methodology ..............................................................................................................29 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 29 4.2 Overall Design of the Study: An Exploratory Qualitative Study ....................................... 29 4.3 Context of the Study ........................................................................................................... 30 4.3.1 Writing Class ............................................................................................................... 30 4.3.2 The QQ Platform .......................................................................................................... 32 4.4 Participants .......................................................................................................................... 33 4.5 Instruments .......................................................................................................................... 34 4.5.1 Revision Worksheet ..................................................................................................... 34 4.5.2 Interview Guidelines .................................................................................................... 34 4.6 Data Collection ................................................................................................................... 35 4.7 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 35 4.8 My Role as a Researcher ..................................................................................................... 36 4.9 Ethical Considerations ........................................................................................................ 37 4.10 Enhancing Reliability and Validity of the Study .............................................................. 37 4.11 Summary of the Chapter ................................................................................................... 39 viii Chapter 5: Types and Frequencies of Peer Feedback Students Received ..............................40 5.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 40 5.2 High-Level Versus Low-Level Writing Issues ................................................................... 40 5.3 Other Writing Issues: Sentence Skills and Handwriting ..................................................... 43 5.4 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 6: Students’ Responses to Peer Feedback ...................................................................45 6.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 45 6.2 Peer Feedback to Follow ..................................................................................................... 45 6.2.1 Common Peer Feedback to Follow .............................................................................. 45 6.2.2 Peer Feedback Needs Further Advice and Clarification .............................................. 57 6.3 Peer Feedback to Ignore ...................................................................................................... 73 6.4 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................................... 75 Chapter 7: Benefits from Self-Regulated Revision Process .....................................................77 7.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 77 7.2 Benefits of Receiving Peer Feedback ................................................................................. 77 7.2.1 Knowledge Benefits ..................................................................................................... 77 7.2.1.1 Providing New Insights and Perspectives ............................................................. 77 7.2.1.2 Covering Various English Writing Issues ............................................................. 80 7.2.2 Cognitive Benefits: Developing Critical Thinking Skills ............................................ 81 7.2.3 Affective Benefits: Offering Positive Emotional Supports ......................................... 85 7.2.4 Social Benefits: Encouraging Discussions and Clarifications with Peers ................... 87 7.2.5 Summary and Discussion ............................................................................................. 88 7.3 Benefits of Revision Planning by Reflecting on Peer Feedback ........................................ 89 ix 7.3.1 Cognitive Benefits ....................................................................................................... 90 7.3.1.1 Triggering Self-Reflections on Peer Feedback and Writing Issues ...................... 90 7.3.1.2 Compensating the Limitations of Memory ........................................................... 93 7.3.1.3 Providing Step-by-Step Revision Goal Setting Process ....................................... 94 7.3.1.4 Cultivating Good Learning Habit: Revision Planning .......................................... 96 7.3.2 Social Benefits: Encouraging Discussions and Clarifications with Peers ................... 96 7.3.3 Summary and Discussion ............................................................................................. 98 7.4 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 8: Conclusion and Implications .................................................................................100 8.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 100 8.2 Summary of Findings ........................................................................................................ 100 8.3 Contributions of the Study ................................................................................................ 101 8.3.1 Theoretical Contribution ............................................................................................ 101 8.3.2 Thematic Contribution ............................................................................................... 102 8.3.3 Methodological Contribution ..................................................................................... 103 8.4 Implications of the Study .................................................................................................. 104 8.5 Limitations and Directions for Future Research ............................................................... 107 8.6 Personal Reflection: Becoming a Strategic Self-Regulated Learner of EFL Writing ...... 109 8.7 Final Remarks ................................................................................................................... 111 References ...................................................................................................................................112 Appendices ..................................................................................................................................126 Appendix I Letter of Initial Contact ........................................................................................ 126 Appendix II Advertisement to Recruit Participants ................................................................ 127 x Appendix III Letter of Permission .......................................................................................... 128 Appendix IV Participant Consent Form ................................................................................. 129 Appendix V Participant Assent Form ..................................................................................... 132 Appendix VI Revision Worksheet .......................................................................................... 133 Appendix VII Interview Guidelines ........................................................................................ 136 Appendix VIII Peer Review Rubrics ...................................................................................... 137 Appendix IX Writing Samples ................................................................................................ 138 xi List of Tables Table 5.1 Types and frequencies of peer feedback received ........................................................40 Table 5.2 Frequencies of peer feedback received and their associated other writing issues .........43 Table 6.1 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ support-related revision ...............................48 Table 6.2 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ coherence-related revision ...........................51 Table 6.3 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ grammar-related revision ............................53 Table 6.4 Illustrative examples of five students’ spelling-related revision ...................................56 Table 6.5 Illustrative examples of Mercer’s support-related revision ...........................................59 Table 6.6 Illustrative examples of Rose’s support-related revision ...............................................60 Table 6.7 Illustrative examples of Zelda’s support-related revision ..............................................61 Table 6.8 Illustrative examples of Julia’s support-related revision ...............................................63 Table 6.9 Illustrative examples of Yara’s coherence-related revision ...........................................65 Table 6.10 Illustrative examples of Zelda’s coherence-related revision .......................................66 Table 6.11 Illustrative examples of Milton’s coherence-related revision ......................................67 Table 6.12 Illustrative examples of Tina’s word use-related revision ...........................................68 Table 6.13 Illustrative examples of Milton’s support- and word use-related revision ..................69 Table 6.14 Illustrative examples of Julia’s word use-related revision ...........................................70 Table 6.15 Illustrative examples of Mike’s sentence skills-related revision .................................70 Table 6.16 Illustrative examples of Rose’s sentence skills-related revision .................................71 Table 6.17 Students’ reasons for ignoring unity-related peer feedback ........................................74 Table 6.18 Students’ reasons for ignoring word use-related peer feedback ..................................75 Table 7.1 Five benefits of receiving peer feedback .......................................................................77 Table 7.2 Five benefits of revision planning by reflecting on peer feedback ................................90 xii List of Figures Figure 2.1 The triadic causation model of sources in the self-regulated writing process (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997) ..................................................................................................7 Figure 2.2 The three self-regulated processes in the self-regulated revision process ....................14 Figure 2.3 The theoretical justification of the present study .........................................................15 Figure 4.1 Procedure of data collection .........................................................................................35 xiii List of Abbreviations B.A. Bachelor of Arts Dr. Doctor EFL English as a Foreign Language ESL English as a Second Language ICT Information and Communication Technology L1 First Language L2 Second Language M.A. Master of Arts N/A Not Applicable NNEST Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher PF Peer Feedback Ph.D. Doctor of Philosophy QQ Tencent QQ Platform RP Research Participant Ss Students TESL Teaching English as a Second Language UBC University of British Columbia ZPD Zone of Proximal Development xiv Acknowledgments I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to those who have helped me along the way and without whose support, encouragement, advice, and contributions this thesis would not have been possible during the COVID-19 pandemic. First and foremost, I am proudly indebted to my supervisor, Professor Ling Shi, for having played a crucial role in my professional growth and development during my M.A. in TESL coursework and research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. The most fortunate thing in my life so far is that Professor Ling Shi accepted me as her last research student in her successful academic career. She has helped me mature as a researcher at every single stage of my intellectual development and made me become what I am now. She is a conscientious, caring, and demanding supervisor who has always been there for me. I have much appreciated her willingness to share her time and knowledge with me. I would also like to thank her for her generosity, kindness, and warm encouragement, which helped me overcome the personal difficulties I suffered while working on the thesis. As my M.A. thesis writing journey ends, I realize how much I have depended on her academically and personally. I will never be able to express my thanks enough to her. I also benefited greatly from discussions with Professor Guofang Li, who was kind enough to serve as a member of my supervisory committee and provided critical and constructive comments on my proposal and thesis drafts. Her insightful suggestions on peer interaction facilitating second language literacy development helped me keep an objective view of the topic. Her generous support and encouragement at the right moment are much appreciated. My sincere thanks also go to my supervisory committee member Professor Ann Anderson, whose research methods course has helped me to understand the qualitative research xv method, to formulate early topic-related ideas, and eventually, to conceptualize the study at hand. Her critical comments and suggestions on early drafts of the research proposal and documents for ethical review helped sharpen my ideas for this thesis. She always welcomed any questions about my research design and gave me good advice and broad perspectives beyond language and literacy education. I also thank Dr. Yanning Dong, my former supervisory committee member recently appointed as Assistant Professor at Tsinghua University, China. Her questions and comments helped me reevaluate my ideas from a different perspective. She was very supportive and generous to share her time with me and assist me in this difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, taking lectures and seminars with her enabled me to do a socio-cognitive analysis on self-regulated revision investigated in this thesis. I would like to recognize the academic and social support I received from the faculty members within the community of the Faculty of Education at UBC. Among many others, I would like to express my thanks to Professor Patricia Duff, Professor William Pinar, Professor Deborah Butler, Professor Sandra Scott, Associate Professor Reginald D’Silva, Associate Professor Andreea Cervatiuc, and Dr. Nasrin Kowkabi for encouraging me to conduct research and offering critical insights within their expertise. Beyond my thesis committee members and course teachers at UBC, my gratitude goes to Professor Fuhui Zhang and Professor Guocui Gao. They kindly helped me with data collection at the Northeast Normal University, China. I also thank twelve students who participated in this study: Yara, Zoe, Lisa, Zara, Mike, Tina, Rose, Julia, Mercer, Milton, Helen, and Zelda. All these names are pseudonyms, but behind these pseudonyms were students who were generous and actively shared their personal stories with me. xvi Special thanks go to my parents, Yunlong Li and Yiping Wang. They have been an unwavering source of support, encouragement, and inspiration. I wish to thank them for giving me unconditional love and having confidence in me. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my beloved partner Dr. Yaowu Zhang, who has patiently endured my absence in his life and provided me with never-ending love. I thank him for always hearing me out, being patient, and encouraging me even when I lacked confidence in myself. He was supportive and cheering all the time. I honestly would not be here without him. This thesis is as much him as it is mine. Dear Yaowu, “I wish you could still laugh at me reading this page when we are too old to walk.” 願歲月不負天地， 願此生遼闊高遠。 xvii Dedication To my beloved partner Yaowu Zhang, M.D., Ph.D. For making me believe that “Forever - is composed of Nows” 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Research Background of the Study Several studies have documented that a self-regulated writing and revision process, i.e., the process of active utilization of the environment, cognitive, and behavioural self-regulatory sources for writing and revision, benefits students’ writing skill development (e.g., Duijnhouwer, Prins, & Stokking, 2010; Li & Zhang, 2021; Panadero, 2017; Teng & Zhang, 2016; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). An essential environmental self-regulatory source is seeking peer feedback, which can activate students’ self-reflective thinking process for self-assessment and enhance both L1 and L2 performance (Altstaedter, 2018; Boud & Molly, 2013; Lee, 2017; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). In addition, cognitive self-regulatory sources, such as setting goals, planning for the second draft, and drawing on self-reflections in the self-regulated revision process, have been shown to shape students’ writing performance and writing skills development by effectively mobilizing efforts to resolve particular writing issues, improving perseverance, and also encouraging students to use various self-regulated learning strategies and other environmental self-regulatory sources (Penadero, 2017; Topping, 2005, 2009; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2002). Current research studies on self-regulated revision via peer review have primarily examined the independent effects of different self-regulatory sources on students’ revision process and writing skills development (e.g., Boud & Molly, 2013; Hu & Gao, 2018; Min, 2006, 2016; Teng & Zhang, 2016). However, as Zimmerman (1995, 2002, 2013) articulated, students’ self-regulated learning is an intricate and highly dynamic process that involves the ongoing interplay of various self-regulatory sources. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the combined impacts of different self-regulatory sources, although learners often utilize these sources together during self-regulated writing and revision (Graham et al., 1992; Li & Zhang, 2 2021; Zhang, Schunn, & Baikadi, 2017; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). Moreover, given the omnipresence of modern technology in teaching and learning foreign languages, an essential venue where peer feedback may appear is through online ICT platforms. Thus, it is worth investigating the self-regulated learning process of revision with ICT-mediated peer feedback and how ICT-mediated peer feedback could shape their self-regulated revision behaviours. 1.2 Objectives and Research Questions of the Study The current exploratory qualitative study aims to shed new light on the self-regulated revision process from a socio-cognitive perspective for college-level EFL students in China. The current study explores how a group of Chinese EFL students apply socio-cognitive strategies to self-regulate their behaviours as they receive ICT-mediated peer feedback and draft a revision plan by self-reflecting on peer feedback they received. It aims to identify whether and how ICT-mediated peer review leads to students’ self-reflections for better writing performance. Specifically, it focuses on how the ICT-mediated peer review facilitates students’ macro-level (content) and micro-level (language) writing issues and helps them become more self-regulated learners of EFL writing and revision. The purpose is to understand how EFL writing teachers and students can maximize learning by utilizing peer review as a socio-cognitive source to achieve writing self-regulation. The study addressed the following three research questions: 1. What kind of peer feedback did students receive? 2. What kind of peer feedback did students plan to follow, or ignore? 3. How did students think they benefited from the self-regulated revision process? 1.3 Significance of the Study Achieving self-regulated writing and revision is an essential goal for writing instruction, particularly when teachers’ written and oral feedback resources are pretty limited owing to a 3 significant amount of students in dire and different needs of writing and revision practices in college-level EFL classrooms. How to enhance college-level EFL students’ self-regulated process of revision is a matter of concern for educational researchers and practitioners involved in teaching and learning college-level EFL writing in China. The current study is significant in at least three ways. Theoretically, prior studies have shown evidence from several theoretical perspectives, such as the writing as a process theory, collaborative learning and teaching theory, activity theory, sociocultural theory, communicative teaching approach to writing, and interactionist approach in second language acquisition. Few studies have examined how the socio-cognitive theory can apply to peer feedback and self-regulated revision research. The rise of socio-cognitive theory also highlights the importance of students’ self-directed and self-regulated behaviours that shape students’ cognitive and social engagements in online peer review activities. Research anchored by the socio-cognitive theory can add new understanding to current peer feedback and self-regulated revision research. Therefore, the study extends the literature on epistemic knowledge of the role and nature of peer feedback and self-regulated revision from a socio-cognitive perspective. It also initiates a theoretically justified account of the interactional relationship of a self-regulated learning process of revision and helps operationalize self-regulated learning in EFL writing and revision. Methodologically, among the existing literature, the mixed findings on the benefits of peer feedback on self-regulated revision skills development may be caused by various research designs. Most of the prior studies are exploratory studies based on students’ text analysis and revision coding. Little research has applied the exploratory qualitative study method with multiple data sources such as revision worksheets, writing drafts, and interviews for data triangulation. Thus, the current study adopts an exploratory qualitative study method to integrate 4 text-oriented, process-oriented, and student-oriented approaches to examine the self-regulated revision process. Pedagogically, the current study provides pedagogical implications regarding benefits from ICT-mediated peer review on students’ self-regulated learning process of writing from the EFL students’ perspective and how to utilize the socio-cognitive self-regulatory sources in online peer interaction and collaboration. From the EFL writing teachers’ perspective, the information gathered from the current study has clear pedagogical implications for incorporating ICT-mediated peer review into teaching and learning EFL writing. It can offer new insights into the nature and role of peer-to-peer dialogical communication and the ICT tool in the online peer review activity. It also yields instructional guidance for college-level EFL writing teachers in China to support students’ epistemic understanding and productive inquiry of self-regulated revision skills development. 1.4 Outline of the Thesis This thesis covers eight chapters altogether. The first three chapters of the thesis present the context of the study. Chapter 1 begins by arguing that EFL writing learning is generally self-regulated because writing sources are limited in EFL contexts, and there is an emergence and development of ICT-mediated peer review. Chapter 2 expounds on the theoretical perspective of the current study to situate self-regulated revision in the writing process and to elaborate on what it entails from cognitive writing theories, sociocultural theories, and, more importantly, the socio-cognitive view of self-regulated learning. Chapter 3 synthesizes how peer feedback and self-regulated revision processes have been studied in the previous empirical literature, especially how prior studies have attempted to enhance students’ self-regulated revision process through peer feedback, how students respond to and strategically use peer feedback in a self-5 regulated revision process, and how a self-regulated revision process happens in online ICT-mediated Learning environments. Chapter 4 reports the research design, research contexts, research site, recruitment, participants, multiple methods of data collection (revision worksheet, semi-structured interview, and writing drafts), and analytical approaches and procedures of the current study. The following three chapters present and discuss data analyses. Specifically, Chapter 5 discusses findings for the first research question about the types and frequencies of different writing issues that peer feedback covers by analyzing the coding part of the revision worksheet. Chapter 6 reports and discusses findings for the second research question of how students responded to peer feedback by comparing students’ revision changes between drafts, their responses on the planning part of the worksheet, and the follow-up semi-structured interviews. Chapter 7 reports and discusses the findings for the third research question of how students benefited from being involved in the self-regulated revision process as receiving ICT-mediated peer feedback and planning for revision by reflecting on peer feedback received. Finally, Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the major findings and the contribution and implication of the present study. The research limitations and further research orientation are discussed. 6 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework 2.1 Introduction This chapter aims to situate self-regulated revision in the writing process and elaborate on what self-regulated revision entails from the socio-cognitive theoretical perspective. 2.2 Self-Regulated Writing and Revision Self-regulation is crucial in learning writing because it empowers students to achieve writing goals by employing personal, environmental, and behavioural sources (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). The development of writing skills largely depends on high degrees of students’ self-regulation. In the past three decades, self-regulation theories were developed and incorporated into a wide range of educational research and inquiry (Panadero, 2017; Pintrich, 1999; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999, 2002). In any academic learning context, students who actively participate in the self-regulated learning process, including setting goals and subgoals, planning for future tasks, drawing on self-reflections, and self-monitoring during the learning process, tend to produce higher levels of academic learning outcomes (Zimmerman, 2008). Self-regulated learning, according to Zimmerman (2008), refers to “the self-directive processes and self-beliefs that enable learners to transform their mental abilities, such as verbal aptitude, into an academic performance skill, such as writing” (p. 166). Self-generated ideas, perceptions, and behaviours that students employ to realize various literacy goals and subgoals, such as improving the quality of their writing and revised texts, are examples of such a self-regulated learning process of writing (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). And this process can be achieved through students’ use of three socio-cognitive self-regulatory sources: personal regulation, environmental regulation, and behavioural regulation (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997) (see Figure 2.1). Personal regulating strategies include cognitive and 7 affective strategies like task planning, goal setting, self-evaluation, and self-efficacy; environmental regulating strategies usually involve self-regulated learning of the social and physical settings, such as seeking social sources for help and creating effective writing environments; behavioural regulating strategies involve monitoring writing performance and self-verbalization. Self-regulation in writing assumes responsibility for regulating the use of writing learning strategies from the teacher to the students. While prior empirical studies (e.g., Altstaedter, 2018; Boud & Molly, 2013; Hu & Gao, 2018) view self-regulation as a critical causative factor for successful in-person writing learning, in the online writing learning contexts, without too much involvement from writing teachers, self-regulation could also shape students’ writing performance and development of writing skills (see Li & Zhang, 2021; Zhang, Schunn, & Baikadi, 2017; Zhang et al., 2020). Figure 2.1 The triadic causation model of sources in the self-regulated writing process (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997) The development of writing is not likely to happen without revision. According to the process theory, writing itself is an ongoing process of re-writing, and revision is part and parcel of writing. For instance, the process-based pedagogy for writing highlights not only teachers’ 8 roles in instilling interest and importance in revision planning and goal setting among students, but also students’ roles in seeking peers’ help, assessing their writing performance by comparing with their writing/revision goals, and improving their essay with revisions. In fact, writing is a series of decisions and choices (Flower & Hayes, 1981) involving critical thinking and self-reflection (Hayes, 1996). The improvement of writing performance entails a self-regulated learning process of revision which is usually “self-planned, self-initiated, self-sustained, and self-constructed” (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997, p. 76). Under the process approach to writing, whether students improve their writing drafts through utilizing self-regulated strategies in writing classrooms is a paramount concern. 2.3 Peer Feedback and Self-Regulated Revision Process Feedback is an effective, social environment-scaffolded source of writing and revision. In the transition from inter-psychological to intra-psychological functioning, students move through stages of other-regulation to achieve self-regulation, the stage where they are capable of self-directed activity and independent problem-solving. As a way to seek social assistance from peers, peer feedback is a practical self-regulatory source that has been implemented in various disciplinary courses (e.g., Alitto et al., 2016; Cho & Schunn, 2007; Lee, 2017; Lee & Coniam, 2013; Topping, 2005, 2009). Meanwhile, with educational assessment moving from “Assessment of Learning” to “Assessment for Learning” (Butler, 2018; Carless, 2005), and eventually “Assessment as Learning” (Boud & Molley, 2013), peer feedback is transforming into a central tenet. With the rapid development of online learning tools, technology-scaffolded peer feedback has been primarily used in EFL writing research, and its influence has been mostly found in students’ social-environmental, cognitive-personal, as well as language and literacy skills development (e.g., Guardado & Shi, 2007; Lee & Evans, 2019; Liu & Carless, 2006). 9 More importantly, peer feedback as a useful environmental self-regulatory source can scaffold the writing and revision process by provoking students to draw on self-reflections on their writing issues (Lee, 2017; Li & Zhang, 2021). As a result, students are becoming more advanced self-regulated writers to accumulate knowledge about writing requirements and writing issues, and more capable of integrating various self-regulatory sources from the social environments (both inside and outside the writing classroom) to improve their writing performance (Li, Zhang, & Parr, 2020; Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Min, 2006, 2016). Also, students can start to view (peer-mediated) assessments and evaluations as chances to gain a deeper grasp of various writing issues and share their personal self-regulatory sources and strategies of writing learning with their peers (DiDonato, 2013; Li & Zhang, 2021). 2.4 Self-Regulated Revision Process via Peer Feedback: A Socio-Cognitive Perspective 2.4.1 Revision as a Cognitive Goal-Driven Self-Regulated Process Writing and revision are complex activities. They are not simply a series of actions (e.g., brainstorming, outline, first draft writing, teacher and peer assessment, second draft revision, proofreading, etc.), but a series of decision-making for these actions. At the very beginning of the cognitive process, the core element is the rhetorical problem itself (Flower & Hayes, 1981). Students’ primary work is to solve the rhetorical problem by considering the task response and audiences and developing a mental representation of the rhetorical issue. Based on the contextual constraints, students can set their own writing or revision goals (an idea that one is attempting to express) or plans (a set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal). Later, those goals or plans can facilitate their thinking process (cognition perspective), monitoring process (meta-cognition perspective), and their decision-making process (action perspective). Since students’ self-regulation is a facilitative and mediating mechanism of human agency 10 (Bandura, 1986), highly cognitive self-regulated students are more likely to make more decisions, experience less anxiety, exert more persistence, and improve writing through multiple drafts (Pajares, Johnson, & Usher, 2008; Sun & Wang, 2020). To summarize, writing does not just happen on its own, and it depends on the writer’s hard work and decisions of how to write. The cognitive process theory takes a fresh look at writing and revision research on different writing sources for both skilled and not skilled students. Novice students are distinguished from the experienced writers in their composing process (Flower & Hayes, 1981), such as the way to construct their mental representation of the writing tasks, to use those representations to organize the given information, to formulate plans for the text, as well as to assess the writing performance. 2.4.2 Revision as a Socio-Cognitive Peer-Scaffolded Self-Regulated Process The cognitive process of writing is not isolated from, but embedded in, a social context. The scholarship of the cognitive process began to shift its focus to social contexts by the mid-1980s (Leki, 1990). Drawing on the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), with Flower calling for a “socio-cognitive” perspective in her later works (1989, 1994, 1996). Other scholars, including Schriver (1992), Berkenkotter (1993), and Brandt (1992), also vocalized the importance of a social plus cognitive perspective. Such a view attempts to combine the benefits of both the social and cognitive approaches, arguing that one cognitive perspective by itself is incomplete. As do the scholars listed above, Berkenkotter (1993) also questions the need to choose one side or the other in the social-versus-cognitive debate. Vygotsky’s concept of “socio-cognitive” in his sociocultural theoretical framework offers an ideal model for studying the inter-relatedness of the social and cognitive aspects of the writing process because of his insistence on the social origin of language and thought. He argued that an 11 individual’s mastery of higher mental processes (cognitive and affective regulations) is derived from social interaction, which has been mediated by communicative language within a larger sociocultural context (Vygotsky, 1978). Attention should be given to mental growth, which takes place as a consequence of the socio-cognitive intervention. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is probably the most widely known aspect of Vygotsky’s theory; he describes it as “the distance between the actual level of development as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (1978, p. 86). The concept of ZPD constructs the optimal collaborative socio-cognitive learning space. Vygotsky often uses the term “peer collaboration” in his discussion about assessing ZPD (see Vygotasky, 1978). The term should not be understood as a stereotyped space in which a more capable peer is always there to provide support when maturing functions are inadequate. Instead, this term appears to refer to any situation in which a person is being offered some interaction with another person related to a problem to be solved. This concept recognizes the importance of peer assistance in the solution of tasks. Moreover, consequently, in learning writing, ZPD seems particularly applicable to the interaction and collaboration that occurs during peer review. Peer review is a typical socio-cognitive source to develop maturing functions in a zone of proximal development. In connection to ZPD, Wertsch (1979) has proposed that, in the transition from inter-psychological to intra-psychological functioning, the learner moves through stages of other-regulation to complete self-regulation, the stage when the learner is capable of problem-solving. There is an inter-psychological effort in collaborative peer interactions to achieve intersubjectivity, a state of equal commitment to the task in which roles (reader or writer, novice 12 or expert) are exchanged between the participants. In later mutual scaffolding of peer review, peers are not necessarily better than others to achieve intersubjectivity since peers can be reciprocal in rendering help in writing. This kind of communicative peer interaction contributes to the development of self-regulation, which is the capacity for independent problem solving, decision making, reasoning, and metacognition. Those who work in the ZPD are said to be other-regulated (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 38-39) because they are led by an assistant towards the completion of the task. “Other-regulation” is a transitory stage between “object-regulation” and “self-regulation.” When the learner has internalized the strategies provided by others, they are capable of various self-directed and self-regulated learning activities. The notion of regulation or control is crucial to understanding the dynamics of peer review in writing. The reciprocal review of content is an essential source of “other-regulation,” which is dominated by the “object” in object-regulation. In the case of peer review in writing, the “object” is the review guidelines or checklist questions that writing teachers give students to follow in doing peer review. After this cycle of “object-regulation” and “other-regulation,” peers conduct their own self-reflection, which is a sure sign of students’ self-regulation. Those reviews peers incorporated into their writing show a state of intersubjectivity between authors and reviewers. Those reviews that are not incorporated into their writing are probably dropped because of students’ self-regulation decisions. As socio-cognitive dimensions of peer-to-peer collaboration have increasingly been adduced in order to illuminate the composing and revising process, researchers have experimented with peer mediation in the process of writing to better understand phases from “other-regulation” to “self-regulation” (Villamil & Guerrero, 1998, Zimmerman, 2008, 2013). 13 Also noted are significant implications for writing and revision as a socio-cognitive peer-mediated process for the current study. First, this socio-cognitive peer-mediated process of writing can help students to play the role of both writers and readers when conducting peer review. Second, this social-cognitive process of writing can help writing teachers design more cognitive activities for collaboration among peers. Peer review, as a typical collaborative socio-cognitive learning activity in writing learning, demonstrates the value of ZPD to the fullest. 2.4.3 Revision as an Integrated Cognitive and Socio-Cognitive Self-Regulated Process Writing is a cognitive process as well as a socio-cognitive self-regulated learning process. Compared with Bandura’s (1986, 1989, 1991) general socio-cognitive theoretical view of self-regulated learning, which emphasizes the significant impact of a student’s personal efforts, Zimmerman and Risemberg (1997) combined a more detailed and complicated self-regulated learning process of writing and revision with other cognitive and socio-cognitive theoretical perspectives closely related to the study of writing and revision and provided fresh insights on the current understanding of a self-regulated learning process of revision (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2003). Indeed, writing and revision are a dynamic and intricate process in which the core self-regulatory sources can be captured, measured, and improved through these consecutive theoretical refinements of writing. Zimmerman and Risemberg’s (1997) socio-cognitive perspective divided the core self-regulatory sources in the self-regulated learning process of revision into three main self-regulative processes: personal, environmental, and behavioural. Specifically, personal self-regulation means using cognitive self-regulatory sources, such as self-reflection, goal setting, and task (revision) planning. Environmental self-regulation involves students utilizing context-related sources, including seeking social help from an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, writing center, 14 ICT tools, etc.) in physical and online contexts and making effective use of the help to support their learning. Furthermore, behavioural self-regulation consists of self-monitoring, self-consequences, and self-verbalization. Now in the perspective of self-regulated revision in response to ICT-mediated peer feedback, the environmental self-regulation would involve students’ use of context-related strategies to seek peer feedback and support via ICT tools; the personal cognitive self-regulation would involve socio-cognitive self-regulation and self-reflection; and the setup and monitoring of a revision plan and the behavioural self-regulation would involve students’ actual writing performance and revision behaviours. Figure 2.2 presents the sources of the self-regulated revision process in the context of ICT-mediated peer feedback. Figure 2.2 The three self-regulated processes in the self-regulated revision process In the meantime, these three self-regulated processes intertwine with each other, making revision a recursive and sophisticated process rather than a linear one. Figure 2.3 illustrates the relationship and interaction of the three socio-cognitive sources in the self-regulated revision process. In this recursive and interactive theoretical framework of self-regulated writing revision, self-reflection and revision plan are personal self-regulation factors (learner characteristics), ICT-mediated clarifying and negotiating processes of peer feedback are the environmental self-regulation factors (learning environment), and writing and revising are the behavioural self-regulation factors (learner behaviours). 15 Figure 2.3 The theoretical justification of the present study Students, when assigned the writing task, form a personal mental representation of the writing task, translate teachers’ writing prompt into their personal goals and regulate this goal-directed writing process into a first draft of the assignment, and then with the social help from peers, revise their initial drafts based upon peer review and their self-reflections from peer review, so as to regulate their behaviour to achieve better writing performance. This self-reflection process transits from other-regulation to self-regulation in Vygotsky’s (1978) terms. The contents of self-reflecting peer feedback can be elicited immediately after they give peer review in the current study. By nature, self-reflection is inspired and constrained by peer review in the form of environmental regulation. Of course, in this complex dynamic self-regulated learning process of revision, various regulation factors cannot be functioning in parallel without any interplay. They reciprocally interact together to operate in the writing process in authentic learning contexts. Ideally, personal, environmental, and behavioural regulation can act upon each other back and forth. Students can constantly monitor their writing through personal regulation, environmental Person/SelfEnvironment BehaviourSelf-regulated revisionPersonal/Cognitive regulationSocial/Environmental regulationBehavioral regulationICT-mediatedpeer feedbackRevision worksheetSelf-reflectionRevision plan16 regulation, and behavioural regulation to achieve optimal performance. Researching interactional and causational relationships cannot be done in one episode. In the above theoretical underpinning of the current study from a socio-cognitive theoretical viewpoint, the key term, self-regulated revision (self-regulated learning process of revision) focusing on first draft revising and second draft writing, refers to revision behaviour based on students’ use and self-reflections of peer feedback in an online ICT-mediated learning space. The theoretical hypothesis of the current study is that the Chinese college-level EFL students could revise their drafts and become more self-regulated writing students by incorporating personal cognitive self-regulatory sources such as revision planning and goal setting and social self-regulatory sources such as giving and receiving peer feedback in an ICT-mediated learning environment. It is worth noting that this socio-cognitive theoretical viewpoint on the self-regulated learning process of revision justifies and enriches the interpretations of the theoretical stance of the study. Following the above critical illustration of what self-regulated revision entails from a socio-cognitive theoretical perspective, some questions concerning the self-regulated revision process and peer feedback were proposed and empirically investigated, including: How can the students incorporate different socio-cognitive sources for self-regulated revision? How do various self-regulatory sources, such as peer feedback, together with students’ goals and plans for revision, contribute to students’ self-regulated revision behaviour for second draft writing? How do students generate their revision goals and draft revision plans by addressing and reflecting on peer feedback they received? These are the key questions that the current study is attempting to explore. 17 2.5 Summary of the Chapter This chapter syntheses cognitive and social sources in the self-regulated writing and revision process, a Vygotskian “socio-cognition” in sociocultural theory, and Zimmerman’s socio-cognitive perspective to situate the current study in the relevant theoretical literature. In the next chapter, I will try to synthesize how peer feedback as a socio-cognitive source in students’ self-regulated revision processes has been studied in the previous empirical literature. 18 Chapter 3: Review of Previous Empirical Studies 3.1 Introduction This chapter aims to synthesize previous empirical research into peer feedback and self-regulated revision processes in order to summarize research gaps that indicate the need for the current study. 3.2 Enhancing Self-Regulated Revision Process Through Peer Feedback Previous studies have examined whether peer feedback could enhance students’ self-regulated revision skills in various learning contexts, and have revealed the mechanisms of how peer feedback could relate to the development of self-regulated revision skills. A notable exploratory study was conducted by Lundstrom and Baker (2009). Their study examined the effectiveness of receiving and providing peer feedback for improving self-regulated revision skills for 91 English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the United States. It is a highly controlled interventional study in which students were classified into one high-level and one low-level group based on their English writing level. The primary finding of their study revealed that ESL students’ self-regulated writing and revision skills (i.e., writing score) before-and-after peer feedback intervention represented specific gains of students. Their findings were also confirmed by Cho and MacArthur (2010), a controlled experimental study conducted to explore the effectiveness of receiving and providing peer feedback for 61 native English-speaking undergraduate students in the United States, and that peer feedback givers benefited more and gradually gained self-regulated revision skills. Other studies supporting the learning-by-reviewing hypothesis are often carried out in real situations with peers providing and receiving feedback (e.g., Berggren, 2015; Cho & Cho, 2011; Li, Liu, & Steckelberg, 2010; Patchan, 2011; Patchan & Schunn, 2015). For example, Cho 19 and Cho (2011) compared the benefits of offering and receiving feedback towards their peer reviewers’ self-regulated revision performance via the SWoRD system. They found that peer reviewers receiving feedback were less potent in enhancing self-regulated writing performance than giving feedback, which is consistent with the finding of Li, Liu, and Steckelberg (2010). Specifically, given comments on microscope criticism and macroscope praises significantly benefited reviewers. Unlike studies conducted at the college level, Berggren (2015) investigated whether and how Swedish EFL secondary students could improve their self-regulated revision behaviour through peer interaction. Through analyzing two drafts, feedback forms, and criteria lists, the researcher found that the organization of peer review activities not only provided students with opportunities to exchange ideas with their peers, and critically think from different perspectives (Yu & Lee, 2016; Zhang et al., 2020), but also raised secondary students’ audience awareness, and motivated students to revise high-level writing issues (e.g., contents, organization, and logic), and thereby improving self-regulated revision skills. Overall, the studies above illustrated several benefits of conducting peer review for better self-regulated revisions. Firstly, using analytic rubrics in peer review, students can improve their assessment skills and have an opportunity to find out problems and correct their writings (Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014) through a self-reflection process. Secondly, providing feedback can help students strengthen their understanding about the domain-specific and writing-related knowledge and hence write better text because it assists students to go through cognitive processes, including figuring out problems, stating the rationale, giving suggestions, and evaluating solutions (see Çevik, 2015; Cho & Cho, 2011; Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014). Nevertheless, at the same time, other interventional studies have also reported some 20 contradictory results. For instance, Li, Liu, and Zhou (2012) and Nicol (2010) suggested that peer feedback activities could contribute to the reviewer’s learning improvement rather than merely providing feedback. Moreover, Trautmann (2006) intended to examine whether students could improve self-regulated revision skills by giving feedback or receiving peer feedback. The finding implied that the critical factor in inducing students to revise was the feedback they received. About 70% of students in their study believed they achieved self-regulated revision because of others’ feedback and suggestions. The contradictory results on the impacts of conducting peer feedback activities on students’ self-regulated revision skills development suggest that more empirical studies should be conducted because peer review is not a simple one-round activity. From the peer feedback receiver side, especially for students with high-level self-regulation skills, students are more likely to seek further help from their peers by clarifying and negotiating their thoughts, or through accessing the dictionary, internet, and grammar books for further advice. Clarification and negotiation dialogues may exert some influence on students’ self-regulated writing and revision skills development (Zhu & Carless, 2018). According to the results from an exploratory study conducted by van den Berg, Admiraal, and Pilot (2006), written peer feedback necessitates additional explanation and discussion with the receiver, either in written or oral form, because peer interactions enable students to explain and negotiate issues in their writing and seek a second round of peer feedback for further revision practices if they need advice or have contradictory thoughts with their peers. Other studies also demonstrated that peer dialogues have the potential to help students negotiate and clarify the meaning of peer’s writing and empower self-regulated writers and enhance their self-regulated revision skills (e.g., Ajjawi & Boud, 2017; Yang & Carless, 2013; 21 Zhu & Carless, 2018). The clarification and negotiation dialogues might be significant causal factors in peer review for self-regulated revision. Thus, expanding clarification and negotiation dialogues of peer review has the potential to become a pedagogical and pragmatic way forward. 3.3 Students’ Use of Peer Feedback in Self-Regulated Revision Process Although studies reviewed in section 3.2 have demonstrated that students may gain a lot of knowledge by conducting peer review that contributes to the self-regulated revision process, there has been limited research on how students plan their revision process based upon self-reflection on peer feedback and how they plan to use the feedback to shape their self-regulated revision processes. Schön (1987) first elaborated the self-reflection process on feedback from peers, and he claimed that such reflective practice on feedback is more effective than feedback alone. Reflecting on peer-to-peer interactional feedback exchanges makes students gradually become aware of their learning experiences in the writing and revision processes, including what was done, what should have been done, and what needs to be done. Such a self-reflection as a cognitive self-regulatory source (looking back and moving forward) might lead to an efficient, personalized repository of learning-related competencies and knowledge for prospective writing and revision practices (Ertmer & Newby, 1996; van Velzen, 2002), as well as readiness for and commitment to action (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). Students could incorporate relevant self-regulatory sources to gain revision skills by reflecting and judging peers’ responses to revise their own written text (Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 2002). However, many students do not really draw from self-reflections on their writing and revision learning processes on a timely basis (van Velzen, 2002). Additional instructional intervention that motivates students to self-reflect on their peers’ comments, therefore, is necessary. Flower (1994) argued that students must verbalize their cognitive thinking processes, 22 including blocks and leaps that indicate problem-solving development. Such conscious verbalization is a form of reflective practice and critical thinking. Alitto et al. (2016) found that when allowing 114 US elementary school students to write their reflective goals for revision on a piece of paper based on peer-mediated feedback, they outperformed those in the comparison group on production-dependent writing indices, such as the number of words that were spelled correctly, the total number of words written, and the number of correct word sequences. The decision-making in writing and revision of college-level writing learners has been reported to be based upon the recurrent mental action of their own goals and plan. In an exploratory study of online peer reviews for 52 US college undergraduate students in an English for academic (psychology) program, Zhang, Schunn, and Baikadi (2017) explored peer feedback as self-regulatory sources that triggered revisions. Results of the study indicated that students enhanced their writing skills (i.e., students’ paper grades for the revised draft improved by a mean of 0.21 out of 7), and created significant revisions across the high-level content issues and low-level language issues. An online retrospective tool called the Lessons Learned was applied in the study to ask students to draw self-reflections for their future writing and revisions. The researchers suggested that doing self-reflection should be guided through clear guiding questions of how students can act on their writing when drafting a revision plan before writing the second draft. As integral components in strategy instruction and feedback, self-reflection and revision planning need to be highlighted. Many prior studies on students’ use of peer feedback in the self-regulated revision process focus on L1 English students, with only a small number of studies accounting for EFL students, who make up a sizable group still struggling with English writing and revision practices (Lee, 2017; Yang, 2010). Among the limited studies, Duijnhouwer, Prins, and Stokking (2010) 23 conducted an exploratory mixed-methods study involving 96 EFL students registered in a nine-week graduate-level course on competency-driven learning and assessment at a university in the Netherland in order to investigate the process of self-reflection on peer feedback in the college-level EFL academic learning context. The major finding of their investigation showed that EFL students who reflected on the peer feedback by completing a reflection journal after conducting peer review could better identify their writing problems and revise their writing. Similar findings were reported later in the same year by Yang (2010), who investigated 95 Taiwanese college-level EFL students’ self-reflection process of self-correction and communicative technology-facilitated online peer feedback by asking them to write a reflective journal before revising the first draft. Yang (2010) indicated that college students who self-reflected on self-correction and technology-enhanced online peer interaction processes could enhance their second draft performance and develop stronger overall writing skills. In other words, by getting involved in self-evaluating and self-monitoring peers’ comments and re-reading and re-writing their texts, students are capable of adjusting self-regulating strategies for further problem-solving actions and gradually becoming more self-regulated EFL writers. The above review suggests a gap in the significant underlying differences, perceptions, and experiences of college-level EFL students during the self-regulated revision planning process in which they reflect on peer feedback. To address this, a revision plan worksheet can be developed to document this self-regulated revision process of reflecting on peer feedback. Other qualitative data and analyzing approaches can also be applied, such as drafting self-reflection prompts and developing follow-up semi-structured interview guidelines, to explore this self-regulated learning process of revision in-depth within the Chinese college-level EFL context of the current study. 24 3.4 Self-Regulated Revision Process in Online Learning Environments Incorporating ICT applications in language learning and assessment is becoming more popular in recent decades. With the development of ICT tools such as WeChat, QQ, and blogs, ICT-mediated peer review has emerged as a possible candidate to promote the self-regulated learning process of revision (e.g., Balfour, 2013; Cai, 2011; Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Paré & Joordens, 2008; Tsai 2009; Zhang et al., 2020). More specifically, previous studies have highlighted three distinct characteristics of ICT-mediated peer review: time (real-time or delayed time), space (beyond geographic bounds), and online communication; all of which have the potential to impact students’ online peer review process and learning outcomes (Breuch, 2004; Jones et al., 2006; Li & Zhang, 2021; Xu & Yu, 2018). In this respect, as Lu (2016) summarized, the benefits of ICT-mediated peer feedback activity lie in its timely assessment and evaluation, negotiation of meaning, as well as the discussion of the high-level dimension of writing (e.g., contents, organization, and logic), which is quite different from the traditional written corrective feedback from the teacher as well as the automatic generated scoring and feedback on language issues (grammar, word use, and spelling) from some online software (e.g., iWrite, Grammarly). Furthermore, conducting ICT-mediated peer review enables students to provide feedback from a distance, minimizing psychological stress to provide peer feedback in face-to-face scenarios (Savignon & Roithmeier, 2004). This relatively more comfortable learning environment provides students with a range of possibilities to become more self-directed and self-regulated learners (Lai, 2015, 2019; Li & Zhang, 2021; Liu & Hansen, 2002). Prior research findings about the role and effectiveness of ICT-mediated peer review on the quality of peer feedback and revisions are mixed. Some studies have identified that ICT-mediated peer review can offer students additional learning opportunities to negotiate meaning 25 with their peers, and motivate them to continue giving feedback on both structure and content of their writing (Xu & Yu, 2018). Similarly, Ciftci and Kocoglu (2012) reported that EFL students in Turkey who engaged in blog-based online peer review performed better on the second draft than those who completed traditional face-to-face peer review. On the contrary, in some prior studies, students were reported to prefer traditional face-to-face peer feedback and response to comments on high-level writing issues (e.g., Chen, 2012; Wu et al., 2015). Besides, a body of prior studies suggested that ICT-mediated peer review “does not necessarily increase students’ motivation, engagement, and autonomy” (Yu & Lee, 2016, p. 469). While some studies have demonstrated that ICT-mediated peer review can increase students’ engagement and enthusiasm for writing and revision, facilitate the formation and transfer of students’ intrinsic motivation, and develop favourable attitudes to EFL writing and revision (e.g., Choi, 2007; Jin & Zhu, 2010; Xu & Yu, 2018), empirical findings of students’ perceptions toward ICT-mediated peer review are inconsistent (e.g., Guardado & Shi 2007; Ho & Savignon, 2007). Guardado and Shi (2007), for example, revealed students’ mixed feelings about conducting ICT-mediated peer review in a Canadian college-level ESL writing class. Their analysis reported that many university students considered online peer-to-peer communication more challenging and problematic than face-to-face peer communication in that it could not always promote students to negotiate the meaning and clarify their thoughts and perspectives. As a result, ICT-mediated peer review might be a unidirectional process of communication, with reviewers’ feedback being ignored and misinterpreted. Guardado and Shi (2007) indicate that facilitating two-way peer dialogic communication and scaffolding students to seek clarification and negotiation of peer feedback using ICT tools is a research gap worth investigating. In a nutshell, the role and nature of ICT-mediated peer review in the self-regulated 26 revision process should be further explored. Empirical evidence is needed to demonstrate whether and how ICT-mediated peer review affords spaces for convenient bidirectional dialogue among peers compared with the unidirectional written form of feedback often observed in conventional peer feedback (Nicol, 2010). Specific questions need to be addressed with empirical data to explore whether students will continue the conversation with their peers to clarify and negotiate their thoughts, and how such negotiation and clarification using ICT tools can enhance students’ writing performance and develop writing skills. 3.5 Research Gaps and the Current Study As highlighted in the earlier literature review sections, despite the lack of empirical studies on facilitating the self-regulated revision process through receiving ICT-mediated peer feedback and making revision plans by self-reflecting on peer feedback, prior studies have explored some peer feedback effects and suggest that ICT-mediated peer feedback might enable students to become more motivated for writing and revising their drafts and cultivate positive attitudes toward EFL writing and revision. However, there are some noticeable research gaps and limitations. To start with, among the existing literature, findings regarding the effectiveness and role of peer feedback on the development of self-regulated revision skills have indicated some link between the two. Still, the relevant findings are not consistent, which may be caused by various research designs. Little research has adopted an exploratory qualitative study design to investigate how students could benefit from the ICT-mediated peer review and self-reflection on peer feedback in the self-regulated revision process. Secondly, most prior studies have examined the independent influence of different self-regulatory sources on revision practices and writing skills development. We know relatively little about the combined impacts and interactions of different self-regulatory sources suggested by 27 Zimmerman’s triadic causation model of self-regulatory sources from the socio-cognitive theoretical perspective. This deserves attention since students often utilize these socio-cognitive self-regulatory sources together during the writing and revision processes. Thirdly, previous studies investigating the effects of peer feedback on students’ revision behaviour are primarily based on comparing researcher-coded peer comments and revisions. However, it is not clear whether the researcher’s perspective accurately reflects the student’s view. By developing a coding worksheet for students to self-code peer feedback received and match their self-coded peer feedback with self-generated decisions for revision, the current study provides insights into the self-regulated revision process from the student’s point of view. Fourthly, native English-speaking students are the leading focus group in previous studies. There is little research that has explored self-regulated revision processes via peer feedback among Chinese EFL students, a sizable group still struggling with English writing and revision practices. College-level EFL students need to become more self-regulated learners as they strategically use and reflect on peer feedback for self-regulated revision practices, achieve better EFL writing performance, and develop comprehensive and robust EFL writing and revision skills. Lastly, previous studies rarely considered the significant underlying differences, perceptions, and experiences of students during the self-regulated revision planning processes. By using a revision plan worksheet, and other qualitative data analyses, of students’ drafts and thematic analysis of follow-up semi-structured interviews, it seems worthy to explore these self-regulated learning processes in greater depth. To fill the above research gaps, the current exploratory qualitative study aims to draw upon numerous sources of empirical data, including student writing and revision assignments, 28 revision plan worksheets, and semi-structured interviews, to investigate the nature of the self-regulated learning revision processes through ICT-mediated peer review in a Chinese college-level EFL writing learning context. Specifically, the current study intends to explore the following questions emerging from the review of previous studies: 1. What kind of peer feedback did students receive? 2. What kind of peer feedback did students plan to follow, or ignore? 3. How did students think they benefited from the self-regulated revision process? 3.6 Summary of the Chapter In this chapter, I reviewed relevant empirical studies on ICT-mediated peer feedback as a socio-cognitive source in students’ self-regulated revision process. Previous findings suggest that some aspects of peer feedback effects and that ICT-mediated peer feedback might enable students to become more motivated to revise their drafts. However, the nature of the self-regulated learning revision process through ICT-mediated peer review in a Chinese college-level EFL writing learning context needs to be further explored. The next chapter provides the methodological description of the exploratory qualitative study design of the current study and describes the context, participants, and instruments of the study. I also discuss the data collecting and analytical methods, my researcher role, ethical considerations, and methods to enhance the validity and reliability of this study. 29 Chapter 4: Methodology 4.1 Introduction This chapter provides a detailed methodological description of the exploratory qualitative study design, offers brief descriptions of the research context, participants, and instruments for data collection, and describes how I generated and analyzed the data. I also discuss my researcher role, ethical considerations, and methods to enhance the validity and reliability of this study. 4.2 Overall Design of the Study: An Exploratory Qualitative Study In the context of teaching and learning a second language, the primary objective of the qualitative inquiry is to “[make] visible some of the complex dimensions of student’s language-related and social engagement in events” (Duff, 2020, p. 145). Prior literature also indicates that students’ self-regulated learning of L2 writing is a recursive and dynamic process (e.g., Hu & Gao, 2018; Li & Zhang, 2021; Teng & Zhang, 2021), and qualitative analyses are helpful to capture the complexity thereof. Besides, qualitative inquiry usually takes full consideration of the learning context (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Collecting qualitative data from a group of research participants with consideration of their specific language learning contexts (i.e., college-level EFL writing in China) is also beneficial to understand how students as agents self-regulate their revision behaviours and how the self-regulated revision process is mediated by each socio-cognitive source (e.g., peer feedback, self-reflection, and revision planning) in which they occur. Further, qualitative data may offer new insights into the meaning of phenomena (i.e., self-regulated revision), allowing an understanding of the intentions behind students’ behaviours (Duff, 2014). I employ an exploratory qualitative study design because it offers educational researchers and practitioners a deeper understanding of the processes (i.e., the self-regulated 30 learning process) and the long-term effect of students’ self-regulated learning of writing and revision behaviours. 4.3 Context of the Study 4.3.1 Writing Class The current study is conducted within a first-year course entitled ‘English Composition I for EFL’ in a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) program in English Language Education at a key university in Northeastern China. The focus of the course is to develop students’ fundamental English writing skills such as narration and description and language skills of sentence construction and styling. The course is taught by a teacher who holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in the field of English language education and has been teaching English writing for twenty years. The teaching and learning of writing in this class follow Zimmerman’s (1989) socio-cognitive model of writing self-regulation: personal, environmental, and behavioural. The model entails the inherent cycle of social learning from others and then self-monitoring through cognitive and behavioural efforts. The writing teacher follows Zimmerman’s self-regulation model believing that Chinese EFL students can engage in classroom learning activities, develop feedback literacy, and enhance writing performance by using self-regulated strategies and instructional interventions. I took this course in 2016 when I was a bachelor student at this university and gained a lot of field knowledge about English writing and Zimmerman’s socio-cognitive self-regulated learning model. Therefore, I sent an initial letter of contact (see Appendix I), and an advertisement to recruit participants (see Appendix II) to the writing teacher in December 2020 to inquire about whether I could conduct my M.A. thesis research in this context and the writing teacher and the 31 associate dean of the School of Foreign Languages at this university approved my request in January 2021 (see Appendix III). The writing teacher designed the self-regulated writing and revision activities by utilizing various socio-cognitive sources, including online ICT tools, peer review, and reflective goal setting. Before the writing phase and the online peer assessment activities, the writing teacher gave instructions on genre writing through close reading and in-class peer-to-peer discussion of how the model essay followed the genre structure. Then, students were required to spend around thirty minutes to write a descriptive essay of about 100-200 words entitled “A career,” in which they should give detailed descriptions of an ideal career and attract possible readers to pursue it. Students should provide specific examples where possible to illustrate their points. Students could either type the essay on an internet-based ICT tool: Tencent QQ (see section 4.3.2) or upload a scanned version of their hand-written essay to the group chat interface on the QQ platform. Students who typed the essay on their computer were not permitted to access any spell checking, grammar checking, or other word processing resources when writing the essay on their computer. By the end of the class, students emailed the typed essay to the teacher. Students were trained to do peer review using a sample essay and a peer review checklist adapted from Langan (2011, p. 225) (see Appendix VIII) after submitting the document to the QQ platform. Using this peer review checklist, students focused on four essential writing skills: unity, support, coherence, and low-level writing dimensions (grammar, word use, and spelling). Specifically, unity concerns whether students made a specific thesis statement or central argument in their writing and kept to it. Support focuses on if students’ writing provided particular evidence to support the main argument and whether the evidence was pertinent, typical, and appropriate. Coherence addresses how well the students’ writing is structured and 32 linked to the many pieces of evidence. The low-level writing criterion examines whether students effectively utilized English grammar, particular words, active verbs, and whether students successfully avoided spelling mistakes. During the peer review, students first identified the problems without the checklist and then with the checklist to identify more problems. They were tasked to seek at least three peers to review their writing and also evaluate their peers’ writing by offering oral commentary on the QQ platform. After receiving peers’ comments, students decided to incorporate or ignore peer feedback, set three to five reflective goals, and wrote a second draft. They had one week to revise and submit the revised draft to the online discussion board along with their reflective goals. With the permission of the writing teacher, I replaced the reflective goal-setting assignment in the writing class with a revision worksheet I designed for the present study (see Appendix VI). Those students who did not wish to participate in the study continued to carry out the reflective goal-setting activity designed by the teacher. 4.3.2 The QQ Platform Tencent QQ (more famous as QQ) is a popular internet-based ICT tool in China with more than 700 million active users in 2020 (Tencent, 2021). The QQ platform integrates private and group message interfaces, social networking, personal website, email, online course and homework, and live stream (Zhao, 2010). Although this platform is not designed specifically for teaching and learning EFL writing, it is a practical and widely used platform for Chinese college-level EFL students (Li & Zhang, 2021; Zhao, 2010). The QQ platform is used for students to submit their writing and revision assignments and interact with their peers during the peer review. Specifically, students acting as writers can submit their draft and reply to their peers in a group chat interface reciprocally and 33 (a)synchronously, in either written or oral form. Students acting as reviewers are allowed to evaluate three to five writing drafts according to the sequence in which they were submitted and provide feedback and suggestions to their peers by using either a private or group chat interface. During this online peer interactive review process, students also have the chance to continue the in-depth discussion and dialogue in different ways, such as offering further comments, providing additional writing sources, and clarifying and negotiating their English writing problems and other issues. After conducting the online peer review, students complete the revision plan worksheet, revise their writings, and submit their revised drafts along with their revision plan worksheet to the writing group on the QQ platform. To sum up, using the QQ platform facilitates students’ writing and revision practices and (a)synchronous peer interactions across various topics and assignments. More importantly, the QQ platform may afford students to experience the self-regulated learning process of revision immensely without much help from the writing teacher. 4.4 Participants Like most English language education majors in Chinese universities, the majority of the students (around 18 years old) enrolled in the course were female (n1=16, 84%), with only three (16%) males. They were all native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and had learned English for at least twelve years. Their English scores ranged between 120-145 (i.e., upper-intermediate level across the country) in the entrance examination to Chinese universities. Their previous writing learning experiences were confined to around 150 words of notices or short letters. At the beginning of my study, I made an informal visit to the writing class to introduce myself and gave a short presentation about the research purposes and procedures of my project. I also distributed the consent form (see Appendix IV) to each student. All 19 students responded to 34 the items on the assent form (see Appendix V). Twelve students (9 female and 3 male) wished to be recruited and agreed to (1) complete the revision worksheet and (2) allow the researcher to collect their first and second drafts of writing samples. All twelve students also indicated their strong willingness to participate in a semi-structured face-to-face interview to talk about their experiences of the revision process. Students who did not wish to participate in the current study still needed to submit their first and second drafts to the writing teacher and conduct peer review because it was the course requirement. 4.5 Instruments 4.5.1 Revision Worksheet During the first draft revision activity, the participants provided a revision worksheet with six questions I designed (see Appendix VI). The participants were asked to use this revision worksheet to code peer feedback, decide to follow or ignore the peer feedback, and generate a revision plan with other extra thoughts by asking and answering the related questions. The revision worksheet guided participants through a structured thinking and reflection process to figure out the goals and plan for the first draft revision. I send the revision worksheet to the participants before the revision process via the private chat interface on QQ. It took about 20-30 minutes for students to finish the revision worksheet after the first draft revision. I replaced the real names with pseudonyms after students submitted the worksheet. 4.5.2 Interview Guidelines The follow-up semi-structured interview (see Appendix VII) explored the self-regulated revision process and identified students’ perceptions and experiences. Each interview took about 20-30 minutes and was audio-recorded with permission. As Spradley (1980) indicates, it is ideal 35 for conducting interviews in participants’ native languages, so I used Mandarin Chinese when interviewing the participants. All twelve participants were asked to comment on their satisfaction with revision, challenges during the revision process, and whether peer feedback and their revision plan helped them revise the draft. Participants were also asked whether they would continue to seek peer feedback and draft revision plans in future EFL writing and revision learning. The audio-recorded data were transcribed and later analyzed. The exact interview time and location were arranged at each student’s convenience. 4.6 Data Collection The current study consisted of three phases of collecting data (see Figure 4.1 for more details). The first phase consisted of first draft writing and online peer review. The second phase occured when students completed the revision worksheet and revised the first draft. The third phase took place when all participants took part in the post-study interview. Each phase involves approximately one week. Figure 4.1 Procedure of data collection 4.7 Data Analysis The present study is mainly based on qualitative data, including the writing and revision draft, peer feedback during the online peer assessment activities, the revision worksheet (i.e., coding and planning worksheets), and the post-study interview transcripts. In order to answer Phase 1 • Writing and submitting the first draft (QQ, 19 students)• Conducting peer review (QQ, 19 students)Phase 2 • Completing and submitting the revision worksheet (QQ, 12 participants)• Writing and submitting the revised draft (QQ, 19 stduents)Phase 3 • Having a post-study interview (QQ, 12 participants)One week One week 36 what types of peer feedback students received (research question 1) and what types of peer feedback students planned to follow or ignore (research question 2), the worksheets were first analyzed to identify whether the participants had, carefully coded the peer feedback they received using the coding worksheet, made decisions after self-reflection about whether to follow or to ignore and elicited any revision goals and extra thoughts about their revision plan by using the planning worksheet. In addition, the semi-structured interview is designed to explore how students think they benefited from the self-regulated process of revision (research question 3). All participants conducted the post-study interview, and transcripts were translated into English after the interview. A descriptive analysis approach was applied to focus on what was said rather than how it was said to explore students’ satisfaction with revision, challenges during the revision process, whether peer feedback and a revision plan helped them revise the draft, and whether they will continue applying such self-regulatory sources to seek peer feedback and draft revision plans in future EFL writing and revision learning. Different types of benefits were generated based on qualitative analyses of students’ responses in the semi-structured interview. 4.8 My Role as a Researcher I am conducting this project with several identities: I am a northern Chinese, an M.A. in TESL student studying in Canada, a second language writing researcher, a Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher (NNEST) who has worked in the Chinese EFL context for three years, and an emerging scholar anxiously thinking about a doctoral program to pursue next year. I consider my insider and outsider statuses both useful and limiting. First, I remain an obvious outsider as I am neither the writing course teacher nor familiar with the students who registered for the course. Before conducting the research, I contacted the writing teacher via 37 email first and learned about my participants’ background and writing proficiency levels. However, I am also an insider, a TESL major originally from China. I took the same course with the writing teacher four years ago, so I am pretty familiar with the contents of the writing course and classroom peer learning activities. Thus, my insider status facilitated me to build rapport with the writing teacher and participants, and I used Mandarin Chinese to conduct the semi-structured interview. To summarize, the insider and outsider statuses offer me a unique perspective to explore the self-regulated revision process of college-level EFL students in China. 4.9 Ethical Considerations The current qualitative study involves in-depth analyses of students’ self-reported data, so participants’ privacy and confidentiality are carefully considered. Precisely, I followed Duff (2008)’s suggestions to substitute all participants’ names with pseudonyms, and non-key details were omitted to ensure confidentiality strictly. Besides, as the study involves in-depth self-reflection on peer feedback, revision behaviour, and disclosure of private thoughts, students’ participation in the interviews and revision worksheet might evoke emotionally challenging experiences. To mitigate the potential risks, students were told that they always had the right to choose what to share and how much to share when completing the revision worksheet and interviewing with me. Students were also told that they did not have to share information that might trigger painful memories or challenging emotions that made them feel uncomfortable. Their participation in the study was entirely voluntary, and there were no consequences for choosing not to participate in the study or withdrawing from the study for any reason. 4.10 Enhancing Reliability and Validity of the Study As Merriam (2002) pointed out, issues concerning the reliability and validity of educational research and inquiry are a disputed topic when involving qualitative data and 38 analysis. I applied several strategic methods highlighted by Merriam (2002) for educational researchers to enhance the reliability and validity of the current study. First, I adopted the multiple-data collection method for qualitative data source triangulation by including the semi-structured interview, revision worksheet, and students’ written document analysis as data sources. The purpose of using data source triangulation is to ensure that a more comprehensive perspective is obtained (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Yin, 2018). More importantly, it can help educational researchers and practitioners better understand the truths about particular phenomena under investigation (i.e., self-regulated revision process in response to ICT-mediated peer feedback). Second, I discussed the research design, data collection and analyses methods, and preliminary findings with the writing teacher and all participants. I also engaged in a continuous dialogue regarding my research with my supervisor and supervisory committee members from the moment I drafted the research proposal to the completion of writing and revision of the thesis. My supervisor and supervisory committee members provided very challenging comments and questions regarding the research design, theoretical framework, instruments for measurement, data analysis, and ethical considerations. Such academic communication allows me to critically focus on the research and consider why and how I conduct this research. Moreover, the communication with the course teacher, participants, and supervisor throughout the research and thesis writing also encourages and challenges me to write detailed descriptions (Creswell, 2007; Merriam, 2002). Finally, I recognize that my background and position would have shaped how the qualitative sources were interpreted, reported, and explained. My interpretation follows my “personal, cultural, and historical experiences” (Creswell, 2007, p. 21) and “allows the readers to 39 understand better how the individual researcher might have arrived at the particular interpretation of the data” (Merriam, 2002, p. 26). When reporting this study, as a Chinese student studying in China, the U.S., and Canada, I tried to explain my subject positions that might have affected the interpretations. 4.11 Summary of the Chapter In this chapter, I have discussed the research design, research contexts, research site, recruitment, participants, multiple methods of data collection (revision worksheet, semi-structured interview, and writing drafts), and analytical approaches and procedures of the current study. Although the approach of collecting and analyzing data for each research question is from a slightly different angle, the three research questions are interrelated. By answering these research questions, this exploratory qualitative study investigates and illuminates students’ self-regulated revision process in response to ICT-mediated peer feedback received. The following three chapters will detail the findings for each of the three research questions. 40 Chapter 5: Types and Frequencies of Peer Feedback Students Received 5.1 Introduction This chapter reports the findings concerning Research Question 1, i.e., the types and frequencies of peer feedback that twelve students received when conducting online peer review on the QQ platform. The data analyzed in the chapter are primarily based on students’ self-coding of peer feedback by completing the first two questions on the revision worksheet (i.e., indicate the total number of peer feedback received; and indicate how much peer feedback focused on the relevant writing issues). 5.2 High-Level Versus Low-Level Writing Issues A total of 37 peer reviews were received and coded by twelve students into six major writing issues. Three of these writing issues are high-level content (global) issues, i.e., unity, support, and coherence, concerning meaning or text-based issues beyond a sentence. The other three writing issues are low-level language (local) issues, including grammar, spelling, and word use, mainly focusing on the surface or word-level writing problems. Table 5.1 illustrates the types and frequencies of peer feedback students received and their associated high- and low-level writing issues. Table 5.1 Types and frequencies of peer feedback received Students # of peer feedback Unity Support Coherence Grammar Spelling Word use Yara 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 1 (33.3%) Not Applicable (N/A) 2 (66.7%) Zoe 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 1 (33.3%) N/A 2 (66.7%) Lisa 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) N/A 1 (33.3%) 41 Among the six main categories of writing issues, the number of support-related peer feedback that twelve students received was 37, which accounted for 100% (37/37) of the total peer reviews. Coherence related peer feedback comes second (83.8%, 31/37). Peer feedback on unity takes third place (78.4%, 29/37). In terms of the low-level writing issues, peer feedback pointed out grammar, and word use problems, respectively, accounting for 73.0% (27/37) and 64.9% (24/37) of the total peer feedback. Last, the number of spelling-related peer feedback comments was twelve, making up only 32.4% of the collected data. It is not difficult to identify more peer feedback was given to high-level writing issues, whereas less feedback was given to low-level writing issues. This indicates that peer feedback is more concerned with high-level writing issues rather than low-level language use, which is contrary to some previous findings (e.g., Leki, 1990; Nelson & Murphy,1993; Tsui & Ng, 2000). For example, Tsui and Ng (2000) found that ESL students peer feedback heavily focuses on “surface concerns,” such as word use, Zara 4 2 (50%) 4 (100%) 3 (75%) 2 (50%) N/A 1 (25%) Mike 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) N/A 3 (100%) Tina 3 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) Rose 3 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) N/A 2 (66.7%) Julia 3 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) 3 (100%) Mercer 3 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 1 (33.3%) Milton 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 1 (33.3%) 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) Helen 3 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) N/A 3 (100%) Zelda 3 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 2 (66.7%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) Total 37 29 (78.4%) 37 (100%) 31 (83.8%) 24 (64.9%) 12 (32.4%) 27 (73.0%) 42 grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and neglects the macro-level content-related writing problems. However, the result resonates with other findings that peer feedback covers global aspects of writing issues, such as content, organization, and logic (Hedgeoek & Leftowitz, 1992; Min, 2006; Yang, Badger, & Yu, 2006). Specifically, Hedgeoek and Leftowitz (1992) found that students tend to receive more peer comments on the contents of the composition. Min’s (2006) study also revealed that 57% of peer comments received can be classified as global issues. The result can be partly attributed to pre-writing training. As proved by some scholars (Berg, 1999; Min, 2006; Rahimi, 2013), students who are provided with peer feedback training activity are inclined to provide and receive a more significant number of peer feedback that center on organization and content (global areas) rather than grammar, vocabulary, or punctuation (local areas). Students enrolled in the first-year English writing course in the current study were trained by the writing teacher to give comments based on an analytic peer-review rubric focusing on both high- and low-level writing issues. Students’ peer feedback covers all six writing issues though seven students who did not have spelling problems did not receive any relevant peer feedback. In addition, the affordance of written or oral communication on the QQ platform rather than marginalia on the paper might have enabled students to pay more attention to global aspects of English writing. According to Patchan, Hawk, and Stevens (2013), students are likely to make low prose peer feedback when they use marginalia. However, in the current study, the ICT tool provides a communication space that allows students to read their essays first, and then offer either written or oral peer feedback at the bottom of the individual chat box, which may also encourage them to provide more feedback. 43 5.3 Other Writing Issues: Sentence Skills and Handwriting Six out of twelve students coded nine other peer feedback, which accounted for 24.3% (9/37) of the total peer feedback received. Table 5.2 presents the frequencies of peer feedback coded as other writing issues. Among these peer feedback, two comments focus on enhancing students’ handwriting of English, and the other seven are categorized as sentence skills concerning the extensive and effective use of the sentence. The writing teacher taught the sentence skills-related writing issues using College writing skills with Readings (Langan, 2011) as the required textbook at the beginning of the course so that students can 1) write complete sentences rather than fragments; 2) avoid run-on sentences; 3) use capital letters when needed; 4) use the comma, semicolon, colon, quotation marks, and dash correctly; 5) use various sentence patterns; and 6) avoid slang, cliché, ambiguous and pretentious language, and wordiness. It was not surprising to see students receive such peer feedback, though they had learned and practiced these sentence skills since high school. Table 5.2 Frequencies of peer feedback received and their associated other writing issues RP # of peer feedback Other writing issues Yara 3 N/A Zoe 3 2 (66.7%) (Sentence skills – Sentence patterns, Handwriting) Lisa 3 N/A Zara 4 1 (25%) (Sentence skills – Ambiguous sentences) Mike 3 2 (66.7%) (Sentence skills – Sentence patterns) Tina 3 N/A Rose 3 1 (33.3%) (Sentence skills – Sentence patterns) Julia 3 2 (66.7%) (Sentence skills – Slang/Chinglish) 44 5.4 Summary of the Chapter This chapter discussed the findings related to the types and frequencies of peer feedback students received by analyzing the qualitative data collected from the revision worksheet. A key finding is that peer feedback students received covers both high- and low-level writing issues but is more concerned with high-level content issues. In the next chapter, I will further explain the self-regulated revision process in response to ICT-mediated peer feedback, i.e., how students self-reflected and made decisions on peer feedback received and in turn, drafted revision plans. Mercer 3 N/A Milton 3 N/A Helen 3 N/A Zelda 3 1 (Handwriting) Total 37 9 (24.3%) 45 Chapter 6: Students’ Responses to Peer Feedback 6.1 Introduction The second part of the revision worksheet was developed to document students’ self-reflective thinking on peer feedback and their further thoughts on revision planning. I analyze the qualitative data from the last four questions of the revision worksheet, triangulate the data with students’ semi-structured interviews and writing and revision drafts, and discuss the peer-triggered self-regulated revision process as students make a revision plan for their second draft. 6.2 Peer Feedback to Follow 6.2.1 Common Peer Feedback to Follow During the revision planning process, students critically evaluate whether peer feedback can be incorporated into revision. In the following two sections, I will focus on two types of peer feedback on high-level writing issues (i.e., support and coherence) and two types of peer feedback on low-level writing issues (i.e., grammar and spelling) that students plan to follow, whether they implemented such feedback, and their perceptions on the revisions. Support As one of the high-level content writing issues, support focuses on whether students’ writing provided particular evidence, data, or detail to support the main argument and whether the evidence was pertinent, typical, and appropriate (Langan, 2011). The third question of the revision worksheet generated data revealing that all students decided to follow support-related peer feedback. For example: “I agree with peers’ comments that I should enrich the content by adding 46 more supporting details.” (Yara, Revision Worksheet) * “Yes. Adding more details can support my argument and allow readers to understand my idea.” (Lisa, Revision Worksheet) “Yes. I should add more details and supporting words to make my essay have more substantial content.” (Tina, Revision Worksheet) “Good suggestions! I should add more details such as quantifying the salary of the job to make my article more real and persuasive.” (Rose, Revision Worksheet) “It is a very good idea that I should add something about this career that can attract people to be engaged in and some advantages.” (Milton, Revision Worksheet) “Excellent suggestion. I think adding more examples will make my essay closer to our lives and persuasive.” (Helen, Revision Worksheet) Interestingly, when answering the sixth question of the worksheet regarding students’ other thoughts for revision, all students articulated again that the support dimension should be of concern, i.e., adding supporting evidence to enrich the content is regarded as a crucial goal. Some of the students wrote: “More supporting details and pieces of evidence are needed.” (Yara, Revision Worksheet) “Find more supporting details to make the essay more specific.” (Lisa, Revision Worksheet) * Please note that parts of these response are translated verbatim from Mandarin Chinese because some students preferred not using English to answer the revision worksheet. 47 “Find more supporting details to make the essay more specific.” (Zara, Revision Worksheet) “Enrich to content by adding details to make my essay more readable.” (Mike, Revision Worksheet) “I can write a more profound argument to support my statement.” (Julia, Revision Worksheet) “Add more details to make my second draft more objective.” (Mercer, Revision Worksheet) “Show the reason to strongly support my argument and make the structure clearer.” (Helen, Revision Worksheet) “Add more details to my example so as to support my central argument.” (Zelda, Revision Worksheet) Deciding to follow peer feedback on specific writing issues does not always mean that students will finally implement those peer comments into revision works (Fitzgerald & Stamm, 1990). By comparing their first and second drafts, I found that all twelve students incorporated support-related peer feedback and made substantial revisions in their second drafts. This aligned with Baikadi, Schunn, and Ashley’s (2015) finding that content-level peer comment such as adding more supporting details was more likely to be marked as feedback to follow when students are making decisions on their revision work. As Table 6.1 illustrated, all students revised their support problems by adding more details, examples, and shreds of evidence to support their central argument and enrich the content of their essay. 48 Table 6.1 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ support-related revision* RP First Draft Second Draft Yara What they expect to do is prevent the situation from worsening and help two sides reach a compromise. What they expect to do is prevent the situation from worsening and help two sides reach a compromise. From ancient to modern times, famous diplomatists such as Yanzi, Suwu, Zhou Enlai, all show their quick reaction and calmness. Zoe With the help of translator, civilization can be permeated all together. …the greatest thing in translation is that it makes a bridge between diverse cultures and race. With the help of translator, civilization can be permeated all together. Lisa Finally, after the trips, you can post your experiences on blogs or online channel… Moreover, you have an access to different kinds of culture. Finally, after the trips, you can post your experiences on blogs or online channel… Zara There exists an occupation that perfectly suits you-designer. There exists an occupation that perfectly suits you-designer. Design is essentially an expression of beauty that requires creativity and passion. Mike That’s because you will have chance to see all kinds of wildlife even the endangered species. That’s because you will have chance to see all kinds of wildlife even the endangered species, such as Chinese sturgeon, Amur Tiger, etc. Tina Tasks of the food taster are to eat food. You would go to England for the juicy beef. You can travel the world while you are working. Tasks of the food taster are to eat food. You would go to England for the juicy beef, and to Japan for the sushi. You can travel the world while you are working. Every time you travel a place, you can make new friends and learn the totally different custom. * Please note that the texts are cited verbatim without correcting the errors and the revised parts are highlighted for easy comparison. This will apply to all tables below in section 6.2. 49 Rose Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. So, you are supposed to have a good command of drawing skills, which will help you create more vivid characters. Julia Being a teacher makes that you will always stay with the students who are in the prime of life. First and foremost, being a teacher makes that you will always stay with the students who are in the prime of life, which leads that your personality will have remarkable improvement. Together with your students, you will be profoundly influenced to obtain a young life style and it drives you to enhance more enthusiasm to work positively. Mercer It will make you get a very good reward. If your works is very popular, then it’s easy to get a lot of money from the network platform. And if your works is very excellent, even can be published or adapted into a TV play, it will make you get a very good reward. Milton Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. Except for the challenging part, you can have fun during the game developing process. Helen There are many other attractive points in choosing this to be one's career. Most of the good translators can earn more than ten thousand per month. Except for the high salary, there are many other attractive points in choosing this to be one’s career. Zelda What’s more, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. What’s more, like famous uploader Lao Fan Qie, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. Coherence Another type of common high-level peer comments that students decided to follow is coherence-related, concerning strong connection, good flow, good transition, and clear order (Langan, 2011). Like what they did with support-related feedback, all students decided to follow 50 coherence-related peer feedback in their second draft writing. A common reason they mentioned is that they need to make their essays more coherent, clear, and logical. For example: “I should follow the suggestion because adding more cohesive devices will make my essay more logical and coherent.” (Yara, Revision Worksheet) “The order of causes should be adjusted to make my article more coherent and clearer.” (Zoe, Revision Worksheet) “I think it is an excellent idea to add a transitional paragraph to make my article more fluent and logical.” (Rose, Revision Worksheet) “Some sentences are not smooth, and some expressions with more coherent logic can be added.” (Zelda, Revision Worksheet) “Yes, add more cohesive devices will improve the coherence of my essay, and make my article more complete and clearer.” (Mercer, Revision Worksheet) Students accepted their peers’ feedback on coherence because they “write for the audience to read” (Helen, Revision Worksheet), and wish to let their peers, more broadly, their “readers and audiences to understand the logic and structure of the essay” (Lisa, Revision Worksheet). They wished to “focus more on the coherence aspect when revising the draft” (Tina, Revision Worksheet). As Table 6.2 presented, students revised their coherence problems by adding cohesive devices such as “to begin with,” “moreover,” “last but not least,” “in conclusion,” “first and foremost,” “more often than not” “what’s more,” etc. Also, it is worth noting that some students like Zoe, Lisa, Rose, Julia, and Mercer provided some new transitional content or paragraph to connect two independent arguments and support the central thesis statement. More illustrative examples of how these twelve students revise coherence-related issues are given in Table 6.2. 51 Table 6.2 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ coherence-related revision RP First draft Second draft Yara Diplomatists play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. To begin with, diplomatists play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. Zoe With the help of translator, world's civilization can be permeated all together. … the greatest thing in translation is that it makes a bridge between diverse cultures and race. Also, with the help of translator, world's civilization can be permeated all together. Lisa After the trips, you can post your experiences on blogs or online channel with colorful pictures and concise descriptions. Moreover, you have an access to different kinds of culture. Finally, after the trips, you can post your experiences on blogs or online channel with colorful pictures and concise descriptions. Zara A professional designer requires knowledge related to geometry and art, which are of great interest foe one to learn. To begin with, a professional designer requires knowledge related to geometry and art, and are of great interest for one to learn. Mike And you will learn about knowledge which includes the laws about protecting wildlife or something like that. More often than not, you will learn about knowledge which includes the laws about protecting wildlife or something like that. Tina As a taster, you can eat countless delicacy for free... You can gain much sense of success... You can travel the world because of your career. First, as a taster, you can eat countless delicacy for free... The second attractive point is you can gain much sense of success... The third, you can travel the world because of your career. Rose / Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work, which means you will get attention from fans and your potential clients. (A new transitional paragraph was added) 52 Julia / Last but not least, you will assume liability which is closely linked to your students' future and you are going to have significant progress with the students to get new knowledge and to learn how to be the better one. (A new transitional paragraph was added) Mercer While bringing popular works to the public, they can also get a good reward… it is always a good choice for us… I believe it is a good choice for such a free and new career. Also, if your works is very popular, then it’s easy to get a lot of money from the network platform. And if your works is very excellent, even can be published or adapted into a TV play, it will make you get a very good reward. What’s more, if you are worried about the income... All in all, I believe it is a good choice for such a free and new career. Milton I think it requires a good command of programming technology. First and foremost, it requires a good command of programming technology. Helen It is very challenging, which makes this job full of interest… I think translating is a great job which can enrich one's life and knowledge, so it's great to choose it as your lifelong career. Also, translating is very challenging, which makes this job full of interest... In conclusion, translating is a great job which can enrich one’s life and knowledge, so it's great to choose it as your lifelong career. Zelda You can win a legion of funs who encourage you, cheer for you and company you. What’s more, like famous uploader Lao Fan Qie, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. Grammar Grammar-related issues are a common type of low-level peer feedback that all students decided to follow. Students listed the reasons in the worksheet why these comments were helpful. By analyzing these twelve students’ reasons to accept “excellent suggestions from peers” (Zara, Revision Worksheet) on grammar, I understand that students agreed with peers that “there are some grammatical mistakes in first draft writing” (Zoe, Mike, Mercer, Tina, Rose, Revision Worksheet), related to “singular and plural, tense of verbs” (Yara, Revision Worksheet), and the 53 correct “use of prepositions” (Zara, Revision Worksheet). Students also believed that these grammar-related problems should be revised because grammatical mistakes “will cause misunderstanding and incomprehension to the readers” (Zelda, Revision Worksheet) . As a result, writers may probably “fail the primary purpose of writing” (Tina, Revision Worksheet) and lose “audiences’ engagement and interests” (Zelda, Revision Worksheet). Therefore, such “stupid low-level grammatical problems” (Julia, Revision Worksheet) that their peers mentioned “should be revised” (Lisa, Mike, Milton, Zoe, Revision Worksheet). They believed that “to pay attention to low-level writing issues” (Tina, Revision Worksheet) could make their second draft “error-free” (Helen, Revision Worksheet) and “clearer and idiomatic” (Lisa, Revision Worksheet) “without taking much time” (Julia, Revision Worksheet). I further analyzed students’ revisions on the grammar issues and found that all students made adequate revisions regarding grammar, including the plural and singular, tense of verbs, general question, non-finite verb, article, adverb, and subject-verb agreement. Table 6.3 illustrates twelve students’ grammar-related revisions. Table 6.3 Illustrative examples of twelve students’ grammar-related revision RP First draft Second draft Yara Diplomatist play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. … diplomatists play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. (Subject-verb agreement) Zoe Have you ever thought about take translation as lifelong career? Have you ever thought about taking translation as a lifelong career? (Non-finite verb; Article) Lisa They will travel overseas to get other places taste delicious food, with the title of "facility trip"! They will travel overseas to get other places tasting delicious food, with the title of "facility trip"! (Non-finite verb) 54 Zara First and foremost, a professional designer require knowledge related to geometry and art, which are of great interest for one to learn. To begin with, a professional designer requires knowledge related to geometry and art, which are of great interest for one to learn. (Subject-verb agreement) Mike Also, maybe you will go to some different place. Also, you will go to some different places. (Plural form) Tina As a taster, you can eat countless delicacy for free. As a taster, you can eat countless delicacies for free. (Plural form) Rose You might have the chance to meet a lot of famous comic artist, many of whom might have been your idols. You might have the chance to meet a lot of famous comic artists, many of whom might have been your idols. (Plural form) Julia Under the influence of young people, your personality will change greatly and you will work positive. Together with your students, you will be profoundly influenced to obtain a very young life style and it drives you to enhance more enthusiasm to work positively. (Adverb) Mercer If a job only needs to be at home and open the laptop to earn money, will you try do it? If a job only needs to be at home and open the laptop to earn money, will you try to do it? (Non-finite verb) Milton I think it require a good command of programming technology. First and foremost, it requires a good command of programming technology. (Tense) Helen As one of the most high-paid job, translator is an option that many people would choose. As one of the most high-paid jobs, translator is an option that many people would choose. (Plural form) Zelda 1. There is better things than see own’s inspiration bear fruits and live on it? 2. Be a uploader! 1. Is there better things than see own’s inspiration bear fruits and live on it? (General question) 2. Be an uploader! (Article) 55 It is not surprising that students are determined to revise grammar-related low-level writing issues because they viewed grammatical errors as elementary and low-level mistakes which are easy to fix. When giving peer feedback, students like Milton could “recognize [grammar-related issues] instantly … and know the solution without difficulty*” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Actually, like Milton, all other students articulated during the interview that revising grammar-related writing issues were the easy part for revision. Interestingly, students like Lisa and Tina also indicated that they were utilizing “internet, English dictionary, and some grammar books” as external resources to “double-check with peers … on the QQ platform before revising the grammatical mistakes” (Lisa and Tina, Interviews, March 31st, 2021). This finding suggests that ICT tools like the QQ platform provide a unique environment for some students to collaboratively find and confirm solutions with peers before second draft writing. Spelling Like support-, coherence-, and grammar-related writing issues, all students who received spelling-related peer feedback, decided to “follow peers’ suggestion to revise the spelling mistakes” (Julia, Mercer, Milton, Tina, Zelda, Revision Worksheet) because such “tiny spelling mistakes” (Milton, Revision Worksheet) are “really easy to revise” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021; Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021; Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021; Tina and Zelda, Interviews, March 31st, 2021). Another reason that students worried that spelling-related writing issues might lead to was “misunderstanding and incomprehension from the readers” (Zelda, Revision Worksheet) and, to some degree, “affect peers’ evaluation [of their] basic English writing skills” (Tina, * Please note that the semi-structured interview data is translated verbatim from Mandarin Chinese to English. 56 Revision Worksheet). Table 6.4 below illustrates that all five students corrected the spelling mistakes in their revised draft. Table 6.4 Illustrative examples of five students’ spelling-related revision RP First draft Second draft Tina What an amezing job it is. What an amazing job it is. Julia If the Creator gives me an oppotunity to elect a career which I am interested in... If the Creator gives me an opportunity to elect a career which I am interested in... Mercer Network writer has become a new profesion, and more and more accepted. Network writer has become a new profession, and more and more accepted. Milton It would be so much better if your creotivity is rich. Besides, it would be so much better if your creativity is rich. Zelda 1. Title: An Ideal Carrer 2. Uploader is a budding job own many unkown chances. 1. Title: An Ideal Career 2. Uploader is a budding job own many unknown chances. To briefly summarize this section regarding some common peer feedback students intended to follow and incorporate into their second draft writing, it was found that students decided to follow and incorporate both high- and low-level peer feedback into their first draft revision process, especially on support, coherence, grammar, and spelling dimensions of EFL writing. This appears contrary to the conclusion drawn from other empirical studies (e.g., Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Min, 2006, 2016; Zhang et al., 2020), which suggested that students tend to enact the micro-level language issues suggested by their peers and made low-level revision when writing a second draft. This finding also indicates that students could identify and balance the high-level (content) and low-level (language) writing issues when receiving ICT-mediated peer feedback and make different decisions based on their self-reflections on peer feedback for further revision planning. 57 6.2.2 Peer Feedback Needs Further Advice and Clarification The fifth question of the revision worksheet provides a space for students to indicate any peer feedback for which they needed further advice and clarification and why. I will next illustrate peer feedback on high and low-level writing dimensions that needs further advice and clarification and its relation with students’ self-regulated revision behaviours. Support I analyzed students’ responses to the second question of the semi-structured interview (i.e., Are there any challenges in your second draft revision process? What are the easy parts to revise in your essay?). Results show that three out of twelve students thought that support-related issues were easy to revise, for example: “I think adding more supporting details to enrich my content is easy to revise.” (Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I think to enrich the content of my essay by adding more supporting details is not very difficult to revise.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “Some high-level writing issues related to support are not difficult to revise.” (Zelda, Interview, March 31st, 2021) However, seven students said that support-related writing issues were not very easy to revise. A major reason was that some peer comments were too general. Yara felt lost when reading peer feedback and said: “Some peer said I should add more details to make my article clearer, but I did not know how to revise because they did not provide me some specific suggestions.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) 58 Julia and Zelda also felt confused when reading peer feedback concerning adding more supporting details. They said: “It is because my evidence could not support my argument in my first draft, so my peers suggested that I should add more relevant supporting evidence to enrich the content. I think this is very difficult to revise because my peers did not provide some workable suggestions for me to revise.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I agree that the examples are insufficient to address my argument, so I need to add more supporting details. However, I am not sure how to revise because my peer just mentioned that I should add more details, but they didn’t tell me how to revise.” (Zelda, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) As we can see, many students were struggling with the question of “How to revise?” because some peers’ comments are not very helpful. To understand why all students were able to revise support-related issues when facing unclear peer feedback, I asked these students to provide details and examples during their first draft revision process. For example, Mercer “wrote a very concise first draft” (Interview, April 2nd, 2021) about the career of a network writer. All of his peers suggested that he “should add more details to enrich the content and support your central argument.” However, he felt “confused and rattled” because he “did not know how to enrich the content based on peer feedback received” (Interview, April 2nd, 2021). Thus, he indicated on the review worksheet that he needed further advice and clarification : “Support – I don’t know how to revise to make my content richer. Their comments are too general. Shall I simply add numbers to provide the salary of the job? Or some specific examples should be given? I think adding too many 59 details will make it become wordy and hard to understand, but to some degree, my essay will become more persuasive.” (Mercer, Revision Worksheet) Finally, Mercer “accepted this suggestion and added some details to support the central argument” (Interview, April 2nd, 2021) because he thought “peers’ comments are all very useful” (Revision Worksheet). Furthermore, he “double-checked with two peers” by sending the revised drafts to his peers and “continued the conversation after revising the draft on the QQ platform” (Interview, April 2nd, 2021). Table 6.5 illustrates how Mercer revised the second draft. Table 6.5 Illustrative example of Mercer’s support-related revisions First Draft Second Draft Compared with traditional writers, network writers have lower requirements for literary accomplishment and lower professional threshold. While bringing popular works to the public, they can also get a good reward. Compared with traditional writers, network writers have lower requirements for literary accomplishment and lower professional threshold. If your works is very popular, then it’s easy to get a lot of money from the network platform. And if your works is very excellent, even can be published or adapted into a TV play, it will make you get a very good reward. Similar to Mercer’s situation, Rose also faced the dilemma, i.e., “to revise or not to revise” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021) with peer feedback on support-related writing issues. On the revision worksheet, she mentioned that she needed further advice and clarification after receiving some peer feedback on support dimension: “Some of my peers suggested that I should add more supporting details and pieces of evidence to emphasize ‘comic artist’ - the career that I selected, after the ‘if clause’ I wrote. But I am really not sure how to revise this issue because my peers did not give me some specific ideas and solutions. … And made me feel confused. I do need some advice from my peers.” (Rose, Revision Worksheet) 60 Rose “struggled with this dilemma” because she thought that if she “choose(s) to revise, then how?” However, if she decided not to revise, she might “lose a chance to improve the writing performance of this essay because peers’ comments received on support-related writing issues are also helpful” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). After “several rounds of struggle in mind,” she planned to “continue the conversation with the peers who offered these comments on the QQ platform and ask them some questions about how to revise” through “deep discussion” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). By self-reflecting on high-level peer feedback received and initiating the second round of peer interaction on the QQ platform, Rose further understood and incorporated new thoughts generated from clarification and negotiation with peers into her second draft writing (see Table 6.6 for support-related revisions between drafts). She believed that “the second draft is becoming much better than the first draft” because the “support dimension has been successfully addressed by adding more details about the job” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Table 6.6 Illustrative examples of Rose’s support-related revision First Draft Second Draft If you are fond of cartoon characters and enthusiastic about fictitious stories, comic artist is a career that you can't miss. Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. Besides, you will have a special experience while you travel in the world that you have created. If you are fond of cartoon characters and enthusiastic about fictitious stories, comic artist is a career that you can't miss. Absolutely, you will gain much joy and a nice pay. Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. So, you are supposed to have a good command of drawing skills, which will help you create more vivid characters. Besides, you will have a special experience while you travel in the world that you have created. You will feel pity for their sorrow and 61 Last but not least, because the Chinese market lacks the talents of comic artists, you don't need to worry about the pay. Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work, which means you will get attention from fans and your potential clients. laugh when they gain happiness, even though you know these are not true. Last but not least, because the Chinese market lacks the talents of comic artists, you don't need to worry about the pay. It can up to 100,00 every chapter comic, if your comic is very popular. Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work. As a result, you will gradually get attention from fans and your potential clients. Moreover, your fans and potential clients will also encourage you to create more meaningful work. Zelda also received “some general peer feedback ” like “you should add more details and examples to support the description of the uploader job you selected” (Revision Worksheet). She listed this comment on the revision worksheet and argued that “How deep is description enough?” and “I do not know how to add more details to support the job I selected.” She asked her “roommates who did not involve in reviewing her first draft before” to give her “more specific and workable suggestions” and obtained a workable revision plan through “negotiating and discussing with new peers” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). Table 6.7 compares the two drafts to show that Zelda has added more details and evidence to support her central argument and enrich her essay’s content. Table 6.7 Illustrative examples of Zelda’s support-related revision First Draft Second Draft On no account can you miss the passion of uploaders. An amazing, wonder-working work embraces the fame, self-identify and considerable income. As a content creater, uploader transform what they like to practical income. There is better things than see inspiration bear fruits and live on it? On no account can you miss the passion of being an uploader for some video sharing platform like Bilibili. An amazing, wonder-working work embraces the fame, self-identify and considerable income. As a content creator, by taking vlog from all aspects of life, uploaders transform what they 62 You can win a legion of funs who encourage you, cheer for you and company you. Being an uploader, time is controlled by you, place is decide by you and no something like pressure. Uploader is a budding job own many unkown chances. You know time is crawls on when you are hesitating. Come on! Be a uploader! like to practical income. Is there better thing than see inspiration bear fruit and live on it? What’s more, like famous uploader Lao Fan Qie, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. Most importantly, different form other nine-to-five jobs, Time is controlled by you, place is decided by you, and no something like pressure. You can work totally for your own dream and passion. Lastly, uploader is a budding job own many unknown chances. You know time is crawl on when you are hesitating. Come on! Young blood. Be an uploader. When facing the same problem, Julia’s choice was quite different. She wrote on the revision worksheet that: “My peers pointed out that the effects and meaning of being a teacher should be provided to support my major argument, but I think such peer comments are very general. So, I am not sure how to revise”. (Julia, Revision Worksheet) Julia also indicated that “revising support-related writing issues is not an easy thing” because “peers’ comments are too general and hard to follow” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). However, she “searched for some model essays and relevant news from the internet” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021) as references. In the end, Julia seemed still “not quite satisfied with the revised draft” and “browse[d] more information online” and “[wrote] a third or even a fourth draft” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Table 6.8 gives a clear view of the revision changes on the support dimension between Julia’s first and second drafts. 63 Table 6.8 Illustrative examples of Julia’s support-related revision First Draft Second Draft If the Creator gives me an opportunity to elect a career which I am interested in, I will choose to become a teacher without hesitation. To begin with, being a teacher means always spending time with the young people, which leads to living a very young life. Additionally, choosing to be a teacher equals choosing to live a stable life. Not only having a steady salary, but also having the guarantee of never being unemployed. Please devote yourself to learning more about teacher. If you are searching for an idealize and meaningful career which is fulling of most people’ s dream, I would recommend strongly that you will select to become a teacher who shows the knowledge to the young students. First and foremost, being a teacher makes that you will always stay with the students who are in the prime of life, which leads that your personality will have remarkable improvement. Together with your students, you will be profoundly influenced to obtain a very young life style and it drives you to enhance more enthusiasm to work positively. In addition, as a member of the national system, you will have the enjoyment of the rich material benefits from our country at which people look with envy. As one of the most sacred profession, the teacher has a very profound and lasting history and is respected by all the people throughout the world. Last but not least, you will assume liability which is closely linked to your students’ future and you are going to have significant progress with the students to get new knowledge and to learn how to be the better one. What are you hesitating about? Please make up your mind and devote yourself to learning the information about teacher. Coherence In terms of another high-level writing issue, i.e., coherence-related writing issues, four students articulated that coherence-related writing issues are not easy to revise, and they wished to seek further suggestions. Again, a significant reason is that some peer comments are too general. For example, Yara felt confused and said: 64 “I think logical coherence is very difficult to revise because I am not sure how to allow my writing to become more coherent and idiomatic by simply reading my peers’ comments. I felt very confused and need more specific suggestions.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) Tina and Zelda also felt lost after receiving and reading peer feedback concerning the logical coherence and cohesive usage in their writing: “It is not easy to revise the logical coherence of my writing because I cannot change the logic and coherence immediately. This is a very high-level writing issue that I need to focus on. But so far, by receiving such coherence-related peer feedback, I only have a general sense that I should revise the coherence of my essay, but for ‘how to revise’, I am still confused about my revision plan. It may be due to the peer feedback being too general without a negotiable solution.” (Tina, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “Some high-level writing issues like coherence are quite difficult for me to revise. Conducting one or two rounds of online peer review may not be enough to improve my skills on these writing dimensions. I need to accumulate more experience in practicing how to revise the coherence and cohesion of my essay. I also need to ask my peers for some specific suggestions about how to revise such writing issues.” (Zelda, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) I then asked these students to provide details and examples about this emerging problem. For example, Yara wrote on the revision worksheet that “one peer suggested that some sentences 65 are lack of coherence and need improvement.” Nevertheless, she “has no idea which sentence has a problem,” and “how to revise to improve coherence” (Revision Worksheet). Thus, she indicated that she wished to seek further advice and clarification. During the interview with Yara, she said that she sought further advice by “sending the revised draft to the same peers who provided the original comments” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). In the end, her peers “agreed that the revised version is becoming better and better,” and Yara “felt really delighted” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). Table 6.9 below also illustrates that Yara added a cohesive device “to begin with” to the first draft, improving the sequential logic and coherence. Table 6.9 Illustrative example of Yara’s coherence-related revisions First Draft Second Draft Diplomatist play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. To begin with, diplomatists play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. When facing the same problem, Zelda argued that “the improvement of coherence-related high-level writing issue does not happen overnight” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). She “needs more specific peer comments on coherence-related writing issues in the future” because the “peer comments received on this writing issue were all very general and vague” (Revision Worksheet; Interview, March 31st, 2021). Therefore, she “continued the online conversation with two peers who have provided the comments on the QQ platform” and received further peer suggestions that some transitional words like “what is more,” “most importantly,” “lastly,” and “taking everything into consideration” can be added. Zelda incorporated these new comments into the second draft and felt “quite satisfied” with her second draft because “the second draft is becoming more coherent and clearer” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). Table 6.10 below illustrates the details. 66 Table 6.10 Illustrative examples of Zelda’s coherence-related revision First Draft Second Draft You can win a legion of funs who encourage you, cheer for you and company you. Being an uploader, time is controlled by you, place is decide by you and no something like pressure. you work totally for dream and passion. Uploader is a budding job own many unkown chances. you know time is crawls on when you are hesitating. Come on! Be a uploader! What’s more, like famous uploader Lao Fan Qie, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. Most importantly, different form other nine-to-five jobs, Time is controlled by you, place is decided by you, and no something like pressure. Lastly, uploader is a budding job own many unknown chances. You know time is crawl on when you are hesitating. Taking everything into consideration, I will suggest that young blood in the 21 centuries, come on, be uploader. Milton also found that coherence-related issues are challenging and decided to seek further advice and clarification. One peer suggested that Milton should “add more cohesive devices to make the article more coherent and readable”, but Milton “just did not know how [to revise]” and he wished peers “could be more specific” (Revision Worksheet). He consolidated his thoughts that “coherence-related issue is difficult to revise” during the interview where he indicated he “really needs further suggestions and inspirations” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Milton then “shared the essay to roommates and received more comments on coherence-related issues” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Based on the new peer comments, Milton revised and “improved his writing skills on Coherence dimension” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Table 6.11 shows that Milton has revised the coherence issues by adding more content and more cohesive devices and transitional words, including “first and foremost,” “besides,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” “anyway,” and “like what I mentioned above.” 67 Table 6.11 Illustrative examples of Milton’s coherence-related revision First Draft Second Draft Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. This is not a job that fits for anybody, random person. I think it require a good command of programming technology. It would be so much better if your creotivity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. This job is worth a shot, it won’t let you down. Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. Whereas affection is not enough to make you a professional game developer. Thus, I think it is not a job that fits for anybody. First and foremost, it requires a good command of programming technology. Besides, it would be so much better if your creativity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. Except for the challenging part, you can have fun during the game developing process. Moreover, you get a chance to broaden your horizon for so many ideas of your whole team are going to be shared. Furthermore, the happiness and the sense of pride you feel when your game is released successfully which took you a lot of effort will be way out of your imagination. Anyway, like what I mentioned above, this career definitely won't let you down. Those who loves games, don't hesitate to seize this opportunity. To summarize, although some high-level writing issue-related peer comments, such as Support and Coherence dimensions, are considered too general to follow, students utilized social self-regulatory sources such as 1) seeking same peers’ help after revision for double-checking (e.g., Mercer, Yara), 2) seeking same peers’ help before the revision to negotiate and discuss the solution (e.g., Rose, Zelda), 3) seeking face-to-face helps from different peers like roommates before revision (e.g., Milton, Zelda), and 4) seeking further information from other sources like 68 the internet (e.g., Julia). All of these self-regulating paths help solve students’ dilemmas of how to revise based on unclear peer comments they received. To some extent, students are developing toward advanced self-regulated learners of EFL writing and revision. Word Use In terms of low-level writing issues, three out of twelve students argued that word use-related peer comments are hard to follow. During the interview with Tina, she told me that she “felt helpless when reading word use-related peer comments” and thought her “word usage was good in the first draft.” Specifically, she said she was not sure about “whether they mean that the use of the word - ‘Australian’ is wrong in the essay.” (Tina, Revision Worksheet). She decided to “double-check with peers on the QQ platform and ask them why they provide these.” After discussing with peers, she found that “the word ‘Australian’ (people) should be ‘Australia’ (country)”, and she successfully revised this writing issue based on new peer comments received (See Table 6.12). Table 6.12 Illustrative example of Tina’s word use-related revisions First Draft Second Draft For example, you can see animals run in the endless grassland in Australian. For example, you can see animals run in the endless grassland in Australia. Similar to Tina’s situation, Milton felt “confused and helpless when his “peers pointed out that he should use more advanced [words] to make the essay better”, (Milton, Revision Worksheet). However, he “did not know which word should be replaced by some advanced words” and “which advanced word should be chosen” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Then he decided “to seek further help from peers by asking questions on the QQ platform” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). After “several rounds of negotiation with peers,” Milton found a solution to use 69 abundant and advanced words such as “affection, professional, broaden, horizon, imagination, seize” to add more details and evidence to enhance the support dimension of the essay. Thus, Milton provided more supporting details and paragraphs with advanced words (see Table 6.13). After revising the essay, Milton was happy because “the second draft looked much better than the original drafts” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Table 6.13 Illustrative examples of Milton’s word use-related revision First Draft Second Draft Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. This is not a job that fits for anybody, random person. It would be so much better if your creotivity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. This job is worth a shot, it won’t let you down. Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. Whereas affection is not enough to make you a professional game developer. Thus, I think it is not a job that fits for anybody. Besides, it would be so much better if your creativity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. Except for the challenging part, you can have fun during the game developing process. Moreover, you get a chance to broaden your horizon for so many ideas of your whole team are going to be shared. Furthermore, the happiness and the sense of pride you feel when your game is released successfully which took you a lot of effort will be way out of your imagination. Anyway, like what I mentioned above, this career definitely won't let you down. Those who loves games, don't hesitate to seize this opportunity. Julia also indicated that “peer comments received on word use dimension of the essay are too general to follow” because she “had no idea about which word is used wrongly” (Revision Worksheet). Unlike Tina and Milton, Julia “re-read the essay and used the e-dictionary to check 70 the usage of some words like ‘elect’ in the essay” and found that “the word ‘elect’ could be replaced by another phrasal verb ‘search for’ to make the essay clearer” (see Table 6.14 for example). Julia’s approach to the word use-related writing issue also echoes her decision to use the internet to solve support-related issues. Table 6.14 Illustrative example of Julia’s word use-related revisions First Draft Second Draft If the Creator gives me an opportunity to elect a career which I am interested in, I will… If you are searching for an idealize and meaningful career which is fulling of most people’s dream, I would … Other – Sentence Skills Three students also indicated that some peer comments focus on sentence skills, but they wish to seek further advice and clarifications. One student was Mike who received one peer comment which suggested that “[one] sentence sounds too passive, choose another expression.” However, he was “not sure which expression is better.” Then he “asked the peer who provided the comment” and finally replaced “if I got to” with “when it comes to” (Interview, April 1st, 2021) (see Table 6.15). Table 6.15 Illustrative examples of Mike’s sentence skills-related revision First Draft Second Draft If I have got to choose a career, being a wildlife conservator would be a nice choice. When it comes to choosing a career, being a wildlife conservator definitely would be a nice choice. Mike also commeted on his experience of conducting online peer review: “I like online peer review activity very much. Yes, this mutual learning process is very critical to my learning of English writing, and I benefited a lot. Although some peer comments I received are quite general. I 71 am unsure how to revise, but I negotiate this issue with my peers on the QQ platform. And to my big surprise, my peers are very kind, patient, and willing to continue the conversation with me. I feel very grateful to them. And I solved such problems later. Anyway, I support and like this collaborative learning way to improve my writing skills, and I will definitely do peer review before submitting the draft to the writing teacher even if the writing teacher does not require this activity in the future.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) Peer feedback can be either general or contradictory among multiple peer reviewers (Baikadi, Schunn, & Ashley, 2015). One peer suggested that Rose “change one long sentence to two short sentences because a long sentence is not easy to understand” (Revision Worksheet). However, one peer praised her because she “used some advanced long sentences” (Revision Worksheet). Rose felt confused and decided to “check it with the Grammarly online software” which “highlighted the sentence as ‘Hard-to-read’ because ‘an expert audience may find this sentence … not clear’” The software also suggested that Rose “split it into two sentences” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Rose then incorporated these comments into her second draft (see Table 6.16). This result suggests that students can make a decision through help from a third party when receiving contradictory peer comments. Table 6.16 Illustrative example of Rose’s sentence skills-related revisions First Draft Second Draft Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work, which means you will get attention from fans and your potential clients. Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work. As a result, you will gradually get attention from fans and your potential clients. 72 Compared with Rose, Julia received one peer feedback concerning the usage of slang. Specifically, peers suggested that Julia revise Chinglish in her writing, which is slang influenced by the Chinese language (Hou, 2020). During the interview, Julia said: “In fact, my English is relatively weak in the class. My peers also told me that many of my sentence expressions are Chinglish, instead of using native English. Personally speaking, this is actually a problem that I haven't noticed before because I didn't find there was anything wrong with Chinglish. In the past ten years or so, I only wrote exam-based English writing that my high school English teacher asked for. I think it was not very native and personalized writing style compared with native speakers of English.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) Julia noted that she needed further advice and suggestion on the revision worksheet. Later, she “asked some peers for help”, she said: “But fortunately, my peers’ different perspectives and ideas made me self-reflect on my Chinglish writing, and one peer recommended me to read an academic book entitled 《中式英語之鑒》(‘The Translator’s Guide to Chinglish’). I bought the book and read some pages, and I feel this is exactly a writing reference that I need to … read and reflect on my writing.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) Julia also sent the revised draft to her peers and all her peers praised her. She “felt very happy about revising Chinglish issue” as “the essay no longer looked like a traditional exam-based Chinglish writing” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). 73 The above analyses illustrate that the students could revise low-level writing issues by utilizing other socio-cognitive sources like 1) seeking further help from the same peer before revision (e.g., Tina, Mike, Milton, Julia), and 2) seeking further information from other social agents such as the e-dictionary (Julia), academic references (Julia), and the Grammarly software (Rose). By revealing individual students’ self-regulated revision process through an in-depth qualitative study, this study reveals that each student might have very different paths for self-regulation and decision-making on comments received during and after peer review. Peer review has long been recommended for writing instruction, more typical in written and face-to-face forms (Breuch, 2004, Chang, 2012; Guardado & Shi, 2007; Zhang et al., 2020). In this study, ICT-mediated peer review was used because of the potential affordance role of the ICT platform to permit students to continue the conversation with their peers, i.e., ICT-mediated peer review triggers social and cognitive self-regulated learning processes). As a result, students could benefit from this highly dynamic process and gradually approach self-regulated revision (i.e., behavioural regulation). 6.3 Peer Feedback to Ignore This section focuses on analyses of peer feedback on unity and word use issues that students plan to ignore. Four out of the twelve students decided to ignore unity-related peer comments and made no relevant revisions when writing a second draft. The unity dimension concerned whether students’ writing covered a clear central idea without irrelevant content. Four unity-related peer comments that students planned to ignore and specific reasons of why they planned to ignore unity-related peer feedback are presented in Table 6.17. 74 Table 6.17 Students’ reasons for ignoring unity-related peer feedback Student Peer Feedback Received Reasons Zara “I think the explanation in the last two paragraphs of your essay is not quite relevant to your central argument. Please consider deleting such explanation” “I think this part is just an explanation of the personality of people who work in this career. I am talking about those people who hold such personalities maybe interested in becoming a designer. I am not emphasizing that being a designer must hold such a personality. So, I do not think the unity of my essay is bad. So, I will ignore this comment.” Mercer “I suggest you should delete the content about the feasibility of this career because it is not quite related to your major argument.” “I think the feasibility of this career is one of the key factors which may attract students to pursue. I also think this content can strongly support my major argument. So, I do not agree with my peer comment and I will ignore this comment.” Milton “Your passage is a bit off-topic. I suggest that you should focus on improving ‘unity.’” “I think my article is not off-topic. I just lack some supporting details, not off-topic. Thank you!” Helen “You may consider deleting the part “for those people who are not so talented, the translator may not be a good choice…” because I think this is not relevant. By deleting this part, you can improve the unity dimension.” “The content that my peers mentioned is very important evidence to support my central argument that ‘translator is a changeling job’. I think that my essay is quite unified without irrelevant details. I am sorry that I disagree with my peers’ comments.” As the above students wrote, they used several negative expressions like “I do not think…”, “I do not agree with peer comment…”, “I disagree with my peers”, “… is not off-topic”, “without irrelevant details”, “I am sorry…”, and “I will ignore this comment” to show disagreement and support their decision to ignore peers’ comments. In terms of the low-level writing issue that examines students’ word choice and usage in first draft writing, there are two students who said that they wished to ignore their peers’ advice. 75 The word use-related peer comments that students planned to ignore and specific reasons of why they planned to ignore such peer feedback are presented in Table 6.18. Table 6.18 Students’ reasons for ignoring word use-related peer feedback Student Peer Feedback Received Reasons Mike “You should consider rewriting the sentence ‘…or something like that’ because ‘something’ is too general. I think that using another word may be more appropriate.” “I think very idiomatic words and expressions, so I do not wish to follow this comment. Thanks.” Rose “I will suggest that you try to replace some simple words used in your essay by advanced words and phrases.” “All words in my essay are simple. I prefer to use a simple way to express my deep thoughts. I think that using more advanced words and phrases may be inappropriate.” Six students decided to ignore unity- and word use-related peer comments received echoes Baikadi, Schunn, and Ashley’s finding (2015) that writing learners would ignore peer comments when they disagreed with their peers. The current finding further validated that individual Chinese EFL students who hold opposite ideas with their peers tend to ignore peers’ comments that conflict with their own. 6.4 Summary of the Chapter Guided by Research Question 2, I discussed findings related to students’ responses to ICT-mediated peer feedback by analyzing the qualitative data collected from the revision worksheets, first and second drafts, and the semi-structured interviews. It was found that students decide to incorporate most of the peer feedback received on both high- and low-level writing issues into revision and ignore relatively few peer comments because of the disagreement with peers. Besides, when peer comments are too general and confusing or contradictory, students still make subsequent high- and low-level revisions when writing a second draft through seeking 76 clarification and advice from peers, collecting information from the internet, and checking e-dictionary, Grammarly, and academic references. The next chapter will further explore how students perceived and benefited from this self-regulated revision process. 77 Chapter 7: Benefits from Self-Regulated Revision Process 7.1 Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the social and cognitive self-regulatory sources in students’ learning process by analyzing the interview data to explore how students believed they benefited from the self-regulated revision process in response to peer feedback. 7.2 Benefits of Receiving Peer Feedback I asked two interview questions related to the helpfulness of peer feedback (i.e., Did peer feedback help you revise? If yes, in what ways?) and their willingness to use peer feedback (i.e., Are you willing to continue using peer feedback in the future?). All students indicated that peers’ comments were helpful for five primary reasons across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge levels (see Table 7.1), and articulated that they would seek peer feedback on their writing in the future. Table 7.1 Five benefits of receiving peer feedback Types of benefits Benefits of receiving peer feedback Per 12 Ss Knowledge benefits Providing new insights and perspectives 12 (100%) Covering various English writing issues 8 (66.7%) Cognitive benefits Developing critical thinking skills 5 (41.7%) Affective benefits Offering emotional and affective supports 7 (58.3%) Social benefits Encouraging discussions and clarifications with peers 6 (50%) 7.2.1 Knowledge Benefits 7.2.1.1 Providing New Insights and Perspectives All twelve students mentioned that peer feedback provided new insights from various perspectives when evaluating their writing. Specifically, they said: 78 “My peers have different perspectives and standards when evaluating my writing, so I can understand what different peers think about my writing. I may face a situation where I do not know how to revise, so peer feedback offers me fresh thoughts and solutions from various perspectives. I think it is an excellent way to improve my writing skills.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “Generally speaking, my peers’ feedback contributes to my first draft revision because they read my essay from their own perspectives and offer some helpful feedback. They are helping me to revise the essay.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “Peers view my writing from their different perspectives and provide ways and strategies for improving my writing performance.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “My brain is limited, but my peers’ perspectives and contents are unlimited. After receiving peer feedback, I think more comprehensively. When more than one peer pointed out the same problem, I will focus on revising that problem first. Their viewpoint is very different, and when they pointed out the same problem, then this is my real writing problem.” (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) “Compared with my peers, my view is too subjective. Their feedback is objective and multi-dimensional. They read my essay with their own feelings and experiences from the reader and examiners’ perspectives.” (Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021) 79 Tina and Rose also mentioned that peers’ perspectives are equally important to “the resources from the teacher” (Tina, March 31st, 2021) “[whose] time and help are limited” due to large classes (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Zoe also indicated that “having peers to evaluate the essay is better” compared with self-revision without peer and teachers’ support (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Besides, two students changed their attitude toward peer feedback. At first, Lisa thought her peers were “at the same writing level and some of them probably won’t find some complicated problems” in her writing, and Zelda believed that herself and “peers may not have much shared common background knowledge on the essay’s topic.” However, after conducting online peer review on the QQ platform, Liza found peers “could bring new and unique views and critiques to the writing” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021). Similarly, Zelda “gradually know[s] how to write and express more clearly” based on “peers’ comments … from various interesting perspectives” (Zelda, Interview, March 31st, 2021). Furthermore, some students expressed their positive attitude toward conducting peer review because they like to hear peers’ new (Yara), different (Helen), unique (Rose), and interesting (Zelda, Zara) viewpoints. “The more [peer] feedback, the better,” said Tina. Zoe used a Chinese proverb by Confucius to highly appreciate peers’ unique comments from different viewpoints: “Like a traditional Chinese proverb says, ‘Among any three people walking, I will find something to learn.’ Indeed, in future English writing and revision works, I will continue to welcome new peer comments from their own experience and viewpoints for sure. I really appreciate my peers.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) 80 Compared with Zoe, Tina used the metaphor “my child” to describe her essay to express the necessity of sharing the essay with peers for comments and critiques. She further explained: “I think my writing is ‘my child.’ I should not protect my child very much, I should let other people find and critique my child’s weaknesses and limitations from different perspectives, and then I should admit these points and try my best to make improvements for my child and make my child ready for further critiques from the society which is the readers of my essay.” (Tina, Interview, March 31st, 2021) When receiving peer feedback, Tina felt “thankful” and suggested her classmates should “feel grateful for peers because peers’ are not required to offer such helpful feedback” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). Finally, students found that their “second draft writing is becoming better and better.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Some confirmed that they “need their peers to view the essay from a new perspective” (Zara, Interview, April, 1st, 2021) and expressed their willingness to “try to find different peers to give feedback in the future” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021; Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021). 7.2.1.2 Covering Various English Writing Issues In terms of the content of peer comments received, eight students found that “peer comments were quite comprehensive and covered both content and language writing issues”(Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021). Some students indicated: “Peer feedback is explicit and helpful because it covers many writing issues.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “My peers offered a lot of feedback on grammar, word use, and 81 spelling. Also, there is some feedback on the structure and coherence of my essay.” (Zelda, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “My peers’ comments precisely aligned with what we learned from the teacher in our classroom, the four basic English writing issues: unity, support, coherence, and low-level writing issues.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) After receiving comprehensive peer comments on various writing issues, students indicated that they could enhance their writing performance by revising high-level content issues: “I used my peers’ comments to enrich my arguments and make improvements on many writing issues and I gradually understand about basic English writing rubrics.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I improved the logic and coherence of my writing based on my peers’ feedback.” (Helen, Interview, April 1st, 2021) And they also focused on revising some low-level writing issues: “Peer feedback helped me with sentence structure, grammar, and word use. (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) “I am clearer to know how to write and use words and sentence patterns.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) 7.2.2 Cognitive Benefits: Developing Critical Thinking Skills According to past research, the organization of peer review activities could provide students with opportunities to exchange ideas with their peers, think from different perspectives, and practice problem-solving skills (Yu & Lee, 2016; Zhang et al., 2020). Five students in the current study pointed out that the ICT-mediated peer review process offered a great chance for 82 them to reflect critically about peers’ comments and problems uncovered in the first draft: “I welcome more critical and sharp language for me to reflect on because such feedback will help me to批判地反思與思考 (critically reflect and think) about peer comments. I found that my essay is not perfect and I revised my essay specifically and pointedly based on peer feedback received. I like the thinking process and will continue with different peers in the future.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “This is a very good 批判性思考過程 (critical thinking process) because I 深入反思 (deeply reflect) on peer feedback. I want to improve my critical thinking skills via peer review.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “Peers triggered my思辨的思維過程 (critical thinking process) on their feedback because they sharply pointed out my problem. I like this process very much and will continue the conversations with my peers on QQ if their comments could not persuade me.” (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) “Once my peer mentions a problem, I will 批判地去反思 (critically reflect) on whether their comments can persuade me. If yes, I will certainly accept them. If not, I will think about it again and defend my ideas with peers on the QQ platform and finally solve the problems. I developed such 批判性思考的能力 (critical thinking skills) during interacting with my three peers.” (Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I welcome peers’ problems and critiques. I especially like critical comments and constructive feedback … because they can trigger me 深入地去83 自我反省 (to deeply self-reflect) on peer feedback. And I also reflect on my peers’ perspective on my writing and writing problems.” (Helen, Interview, April 1st, 2021) Dong (2015) synthesized two commonly accepted Chinese versions of critical thinking: 批Pi判Pan思Si維Wei and 思Si辨Bian能Neng力Li, which are often used interchangeably but show different understanding of the word or concept (critical) as a whole. The word 批Pi判Pan思Si維Wei is a more direct literal translation that has been widely used in academic research in China and daily Chinese conversation when people refer to the concept of critical thinking. Nevertheless, some researchers suggested that this translation is inclined to lead to misunderstanding because its’ literally meaning is “thinking to criticize” (e.g., Wen, 2008). As for 思Si辨Bian能Neng力Li, which literally means the “reflective thinking ability,” it has recently been used more and more widely and frequently as a more appropriate substitute 批Pi判Pan思Si維Wei to refer to critical thinking in teaching and learning EFL in China. Since I used Mandarin Chinese to interview this group of Chinse college-level EFL students, they mentioned words related to their personal understanding of critical thinking such as “批判地反思與思考 (critically reflect and think) about peer comments” (Lisa), “very good 批判性思考過程 (critical thinking process)” (Julia), “思辨思維過程 (process of critically think) on peers’ feedback” (Mercer), “批判地去反思 (critically reflect) on whether their comments can persuade me” (Milton), and “深入地去自我反省 (to deeply self-reflect) on peer feedback received” (Helen). Although students indicated that the critical thinking process was facilitated, I did not 84 assess and compare their critical thinking skills before and after receiving peer feedback. However, I am able to make some inferences based on the qualitative data collected. Specifically, in this highly interactive peer-mediated self-regulated revision process, students were exposed to a variety of peer comments. They made decisions of accepting or opposing others’ ideas and were given chances to negotiate and clarify their ideas to others. When they chose to follow their peer feedback as received, they seemed aware of the limits of their knowledge (intellectual humility) (e.g., Lisa, Milton). By negotiating and clarifying with their peers, they demonstrated that they could comprehend ideas from other peers’ perspectives (intellectual empathy) (e.g., Helen). Furthermore, when students defend their ideas with their peers, they need to generate good reasoning skills to convince their peers and appear to develop confidence in reasoning (e.g., Milton, Mercer). When students took an active role in their self-regulated revision process, they learned to think and take responsibility for their own thinking process (intellectual autonomy) (e.g., Lisa, Julia, Mercer). Altogether, four basic intellectual traits (i.e., intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, confidence in reasoning, and intellectual autonomy) that an ideal critical thinker should possess (Paul & Elder, 2001) are identified within these students’ behaviours during the self-regulated learning revision process. The intellectual traits of critical thinkers are influenced by mixed factors, including the character that a person is born with and the social learning environment with which the students interact (Dong, 2015; Stapleton, 2019; Yuan & Stapleton, 2020). As we can see, the interactive online peer review activities could provide abundant opportunities for individual and collaborative problem solving and reasoning practices. Students gradually master their cognitive regulation and became skilled learners with critical thinking and self-regulation for better EFL writing and revision practices. 85 7.2.3 Affective Benefits: Offering Positive Emotional Supports Frederickson (2009) identifies the ten most common positive emotions: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. During the semi-structured interview, seven out of twelve students mentioned that some peers offered positive emotional support to their EFL writing and revision because they provided constructive feedback and words of praise. Five students used expressions like “grateful,” “quite hopeful,” “delighted,” “more interested,” “inspired,” “highly inspired,” “glad,” “happy,” “very happy,” “really happy,” “being encouraged,” and “feel encouraged” to describe the positive emotions that constructive peer comments brought to them and in turn, inspired them to make significant revisions on both high- and low-level writing issues. For example: “My peers read my essay word by word and found some grammar and word use problems. Some peers’ comments are special and advanced. So, I feel very 感恩 (grateful) and accept their suggestions immediately. I am 相當有希望 (quite hopeful) about my English writing.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I am not good at finding my writing problem, and I don’t want to find my problems because I feel my writing is perfect and flawless. But when my peers mention some problems, I will humbly accept their opinions, and I think the revised version is better. I feel 高興 (delighted) and 受到啟發 (inspired). After conducting the peer review, I became humbler and 越來越喜歡 more interested in continuing the conversation and negotiating the comments and criticisms rather than being self-satisfied as before. I am 樂意 (glad) to conduct a peer review, and I feel very grateful for my peers because their feedback is useful and reasonable.” (Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021) 86 “Overall, they helped me to polish my writing, and I feel 非常開心 (very happy) and 受到鼓勵 (encouraged) when reading the revised draft.” (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) “Peer’s comments allowed me to make my writing more persuasive because some peers asked me to add more supporting details and shreds of evidence, such as data and examples. I think my second draft has more substantial content. I feel really 感恩 (grateful) and 開心 (happy)!” (Helen, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I often make some grammar mistakes, but I won’t realize them. My peers pointed them out, and I was 很開心 (really happy) and corrected my grammar mistakes. I also 覺得被鼓勵到 (feel encouraged) because they made me believe I have progress.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) Contrary to prior empirical findings that students tend to provide and receive general positive peer comments without training and such peer comments are likely to be ignored (VanDeWeghe, 2004; Tsivitanidou et al., 2012, Zhang, 2018), Zoe and Lisa in the current study indicated that peers’ general praise encouraged them to revise: “Except proving me some specific comments on high- and low-level writing issues, they also praised my writing and 鼓勵 (encouraged) me. Then, I think I was 非常受到啟發 (highly inspired) and 很高興 (really delighted), and I hope to receive more peer feedback. I also feel that they are passionate about giving me valuable feedback, and they did give me quite good feedback. 特別感恩 (Very grateful).” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) 87 “Two of my peers praised me, and I agree with them, and I am 非常高興 (very delighted) to see that I did an excellent job on first draft writing.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) 7.2.4 Social Benefits: Encouraging Discussions and Clarifications with Peers The self-regulated revision process is a sophisticated recursive process rather than a linear one. Students could seek further help from the social agents for several rounds to solve the problems (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). Six out of twelve students articulated that they benefited from continuing the discussion and clarifying their thoughts on some writing issues with their peers before writing a second draft: “I also tried to continue the conversation with them via the QQ platform. They offer me more helpful feedback and I learned a lot.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “I enjoy conducting peer review and giving peer feedback, and I also continue such helpful communication with my peers on the QQ platform after our peer review time. I think my writing skills are improving very fast.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I also discussed and negotiated writing issues with my peers on the QQ platform and make progress together.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I further continued the online conversation with my peers on the QQ platform, discussing and negotiating the low-level writing issues. I like this online deep learning process and I can see my personal growth.” (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) 88 “I discussed some low-level writing issues as I continue the conversation with my peers on the QQ platform and I learned a lot.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “Some peers’ comments I may not agree with, but I will continue this conversation with them on the QQ platform and find a persuasive solution or plan for me to revise better.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) 7.2.5 Summary and Discussion Peer review has long been part of recommended L2 writing instruction, although more typically in classroom face-to-face formats (Lee, 2017; Min, 2006). In the current study, I examine online ICT-mediated peer review as a source of feedback for students’ self-regulated revision skills development. The finding of students’ benefits from receiving ICT-mediated peer feedback on various cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge levels confirms that peer review is potentially an important and powerful part affecting these students’ self-regulated academic learning processes (Black & William, 1998; Gibbs & Simpson, 2002; Hattie, 1987). The results presented here, which suggest that peer review brings new insights from different perspectives and knowledge of writing because of having multiple reviewers, echoes earlier studies’ findings (e.g., Liu & Carless, 2006; Zhang, Schunn, & Baikadi, 2017; Zhang, 2018). More importantly, by applying the in-depth qualitative data analysis, the current research also reveals that ICT-mediated peer comments contribute to students’ positive emotion toward peer review and trigger additional rounds of the utilization of socio-cognitive sources from the learning environment. Furthermore, it allows students to be involved in higher psychological process of learning, and as a result, students gradually approach cognitive self-regulation and develop critical thinking skills and audience awareness. 89 The socio-cognitive approach suggests that students should actively engage with peer feedback and develop new ideas (e.g., Bean, 2011; Dong, 2015; Lee, 2017; Li & Zhang, 2021; Rao, 2007). In the current study, when students give and receive feedback from their peers on the QQ platform, the process provided an opportunity for students to gradually approach ZPD through cognitive regulation, where they learn from others and accomplish the writing and revision tasks better. As Sadler (1989) articulated, there are three conditions for effective feedback practices: (1) understanding knowledge of the standards; (2) having to compare those standards to one’s own work; and (3) taking action to close the gap between the two (cited from Rust, O’Donovan, & Price, 2005, p. 234). In the study, the peer review guidelines used in the classroom are the standards; the peer review is a process to compare those standards to others’ work and plan for future actions by self-reflecting on peer feedback; and finally, revising is thus the behaviour that can close the gap between the standards and the work. In the next section, I will focus on summarizing students’ benefits from the second socio-cogntive element of students’ self-regulated revision processes, i.e., drafting a revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback received. 7.3 Benefits of Revision Planning by Reflecting on Peer Feedback I asked two interview questions related to the helpfulness of the revision worksheet (i.e., Did the revision plan worksheet help you revise? If yes, in what ways?) and their willingness to draft revision plan before revision (i.e., Are you willing to continue drafting a revision plan in the future. All twelve students indicated that completing the revision plan worksheet by reflecting on peer feedback was helpful for five major benefits across social and cognitive levels (see Table 7.2) and aiticulated that they would draft a revision plan before revising they first draft in the future. 90 Table 7.2 Five benefits of revision planning by reflecting on peer feedback Types of benefits Benefits of revision planning by reflecting on peer feedback Per 12 Ss Cognitive benefits Triggering self-reflections on peer feedback and writing issues 12 (100%) Compensating the limitations of memory 8 (66.7%) Providing step-by-step revision goal setting process 8 (66.7%) Cultivating good learning habit 2 (16.7%) Social benefits Encouraging discussions and clarifications with peers 5 (41.7%) 7.3.1 Cognitive Benefits 7.3.1.1 Triggering Self-Reflections on Peer Feedback and Writing Issues The revision worksheet consists of two parts: coding and planning. By completing this worksheet based on coding peer feedback and making planning decisions, all twelve students pointed out that the revision worksheet was helpful because they obtained opportunities to reflectively think about peers’ comments and attempted to find solutions for second draft writing. Some students mentioned that: “The worksheet is very helpful because my thoughts and logic are becoming clearer after drafting this revision plan by deeply reflecting on peer feedback I received.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “I also think this problem-finding-reflecting-solving process is very good. I plan for the next step of my revision work. I solved all unsatisfied parts, and my second draft is better.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “When I reflect on my peers’ comments by completing this two-page worksheet, I also develop some new ideas in my mind. Actually, I won't think such comprehensively without using this worksheet.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) 91 “I won’t think deeply before writing a second draft because peer feedback is just for my reference. But with the help from the worksheet, I can take time to review and reflect on peer feedback received.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I like this systematic and clear worksheet compared with simply reading my peers’ feedback because it allows me to do self-reflection.” (Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I use this worksheet as a reference to review and think about my peers’ comments. And this process allows me to have a clear view of the direction for further revision. In other words, I am clearer to know how to revise my essay.” (Tina, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “This worksheet allows me to have deep understandings of my peers’ feedback through self-reflection, and it assists me in finding the highlighted and valuable parts of peer feedback. Like what I can revise, what I do not need to revise. I also clarify my logic, and make a final decision for second draft writing. This process makes my essay more readable and persuasive. With this worksheet in hand, I can revise my essay quickly and effectively with great concentration.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) In addition, six students indicated the coding sheet on the first page of the revision worksheet helped them understand and reflect on high- and low-level writing issues because the worksheet offered definitions, examples, and Chinese translations of various writing issues: “This worksheet is very helpful because it clearly presents many items on the first page, which are some common writing problems. I can use this 92 worksheet as a reference and compare my writing with those different writing problems and think about how to improve my writing performance.” (Zelda, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “When completing the first page of the revision worksheet, I am thinking and reflecting on my writing problems in the first draft, both high- and low-levels. I think my revision work is becoming more directional and explicit.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I didn’t realize that there are many issues that need to pay close attention to, such as support and coherence. The definition on the worksheet is good for me to think further. Also, the worksheet provided some examples for grammar which is great for me to learn.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “It allows me to conduct deep reflective thinking on writing issues that peer feedback covered, especially the content, coherence, and language issues. I like the Chinese translation of the writing issue because I am not sure what is Unity, but the translated version 中心突出 is easy for me to understand. I think many issues listed on the first page are what we are taught in class. Once we successfully cope with those issues, our writing becomes better.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “Such worksheet-triggered discussion makes me think and reflect on my writing and writing issues. The writing issues listed on the first page are very comprehensive. I gain a basic understanding of the common mistakes in English writing. So, I will always think about and reflect on these writing issues. Specifically, the “Support” dimension helped me add more supporting details 93 and evidence. Whenever I use a general example in my essay, I will think about adding vivid descriptions to support my major argument strongly.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “It helps make my thinking of revision clearer. I gradually know what feedback I can incorporate and what feedback should be ignored.” (Helen, Interview, April 1st, 2021) 7.3.1.2 Compensating the Limitations of Memory As brain and cognitive neurosciences studies demonstrated, human beings remember things best immediately after reading, hearing, or watching them (Bigelow & Poremba, 2014). When reviewing peer comments and planning for the second draft mentally, eight students articulated that their memory was limited because they did not revise the draft immediately after receiving peer feedback. They acknowledged that the “two-page form of the revision worksheet is excellent” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021; Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021) because they “can refer to [the worksheet] and read it back and forth again and again while revising the essay” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) to “cope with the limited memory” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021). As a result, students are “unlikely to miss any point during the revision process” (Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021). Julia and Mercer also elaborated on the benefits that the written form of revision plan could compensate for the limitations of their memory and helped to make the revision process more manageable without missing things. Specifically, they said during the interview: “Without the weeksheet, I will forget about tips and issues in English writing I learned in class. When I printed it out and write my thoughts on it, it is very clear at a glance, and I can combine this worksheet with peer feedback. If I 94 do not write everything down, I will miss something because I am not a computer and cannot remember everything.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I cannot remember everything because my memory is limited. It helped document my thoughts and reflections. Without this revision worksheet, I may miss something my peers mentioned. So, I think using this systematically designed worksheet can save time for second draft writing. I also can review this written worksheet back and forth due to the limitation of my memory. So, I prefer to have a worksheet at hand to clearly direct me for revision. … This worksheet makes my revision process more manageable, directional, and efficient.” (Mercer, Interview, April 2nd, 2021) 7.3.1.3 Providing Step-by-Step Revision Goal Setting Process Students’ self-regulated revision process includes thinking and reviewing writing issues covered in peers’ comments, and making improvements for the next step which entails a progressive goal-setting process. By answering questions on the worksheet to decide what feedback to follow or not to follow, students felt they generated clear goals for second draft writing: “My thoughts, logic, and goals for revision are clearer after drafting this revision plan because of answering those well-designed questions.” (Yara, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “Answering questions one by one helped me to narrow and refine my revision goals for solving these writing problems. My revision work is becoming more manageable and workable.” (Zoe, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) “I generated clear revision goals by addressing those problems on this 95 worksheet step-by-step and made progress in English writing.” (Lisa, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “This worksheet has very clear logic to follow. I am more explicit about what I am going to revise as I listed some specific goals for second draft writing ….” (Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I like the questions listed on this worksheet, like following or ignoring peer feedback, seeking clarification. Because in daily revision work, I will not think comprehensively and clearly about revision. I think this is an excellent step-by-step way to make my revision process more organized and goal-directed.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “Before revising your essay, you have to have a clear revision. If you do not have a clear revision plan, then you probably make no progress. Overall, this worksheet allows me to have a clear goal and workable plan by answering such questions step by step.” (Tina, Interview, March 31st, 2021) “The systematically designed questions, like what feedback I am planning to follow or do not wish to follow, allow me to reflect on my peers’ suggestions and further consider what I will follow or ignore. This workable revision plan makes me have clear goals for second draft writing because of its good design and helpful questions.” (Milton, Interview, April 1st, 2021) Although finishing this worksheet by answering questions takes time, students like Zara argued that “the revision speed becomes faster because you have clear goals for revision once you have finished this worksheet” (Interview, April 1st, 2021). Moreover, all students were very willing to take the time to draft this practical revision plan by answering the questions. 96 7.3.1.4 Cultivating Good Learning Habit: Revision Planning Planning the way to approach a learning task is one of students’ metacognitive skills. When students make revision plans, they are conscious of how they learn and identify the most effective ways of revision. During the interview, Zara and Julia stressed that they appreciated the revision worksheet which helped them cultivate the habit of planning for academic learning: “I think it is a good habit to plan things. I have not tried to make a plan before, but this plan is good. I will continue to use this plan for English writing in the future.” (Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “When I was in high school, I was required to write a short essay within 20 minutes, and we were not required to revise it, let alone make a revision plan. Thus, I am not good at structuring my essay and have not experienced a systematic plan to revise my essay carefully. With the help of this worksheet, I am slowly cultivating a good habit of planning things without the teacher’s instruction.” (Julia, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) 7.3.2 Social Benefits: Encouraging Discussions and Clarifications with Peers When analyzing how the revision worksheet shaped student’s self-regulated revision process, students also indicated that the revision worksheet, especially the fifth question on the worksheet (i.e., Indicate if there is any feedback you are going to seek advice or clarification from your peers, and explain why?), helped them seek further advice from, and negotiations with, their peers. This pushed students to strategically initiate the following round of self-regulated learning of revision from the social environment (environmental regulation), gain a deeper understanding of fundamental English writing issues, and writing performance in a collaborative learning way. 97 For example, when reading peer comments, Julia “had some opposite views after reading peer feedback (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Julia followed up the discussion with her peers and further explained her thoughts to peers on the QQ platform. She said she “really improved a lot and benefited from drafting this worksheet” (Interview, April 3rd, 2021). Similarly, Lisa felt the social interaction with peers on the QQ platform is enjoyable, easy to conduct, and helps her “gain more if continue practice revisions by using this worksheet to communicate with peers in the future” (Interview, March 31st, 2021). Zara, Mike, and Rose held similar beliefs because peers helped them to make decisions and generate a more workable plan for second draft writing. Specifically, they articulated: “I found one question regarding what feedback that I need peers to clarify, …. This question [on the worksheet]triggered me to seek peer feedback again and reflect on what peer feedback needs further discussion and negotiation. I wish to generate a unique understanding during the further discussion with my peers.” (Zara, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “This worksheet also let me communicate with my peers and roommates and deepen my understanding of English writing issues. I like to use this worksheet as a reference when arguing with my peers, and I generate a more workable plan for revision.” (Mike, Interview, April 1st, 2021) “I like to seek further helps from peers and will do so in the future, such as continuing the conversation with them on the QQ platform or in face-to-face. Because I can get a final plan for my revision involving peers in my decision-making process.” (Rose, Interview, April 3rd, 2021) 98 7.3.3 Summary and Discussion Although previous studies concluded that students learn significantly from peer review (Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Min, 2006, 2016; Patchan, 2011; Yu & Lee, 2015; Zhang et al., 2020), most of these studies lack access to the contents of what students take away from peer feedback and how students reflect on peer feedback. In the current study, I developed a revision worksheet containing coding peer comments and planning for revision to document this self-reflecting and decision-making process. More importantly, I also explored students’ behaviour in response to peer feedback by conducting semi-structured interviews with these students. The findings suggests that students’ benefits from revision planning verify the view that self-reflection and action planning are critical factors affecting student self-regulated learning process (Hattie, 1987; Black & William, 1998; Zhang, Schunn, & Baikadi, 2017). In addition, this qualitative study reveals that drafting a revision plan could trigger following rounds of utilizing socio-cognitive sources from the learning environment (Baikadi, Schunn, & Ashley, 2015; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). Written revision plans also compensate for students’ memory limitation, provide step-by-step goal-setting support, and cultivate the bahit of planning before taking actions for academic learning. In doing so, students are able to approach cognitive self-regulation and develop critical thinking skills and audience awareness in a long run. The study which suggest that augmenting an the online ICT peer review process with a requirement for students to document their self-reflections, provided a unique opportunity to analyze the more direct connection between students’ cognitive regulation (self-reflection) from social-environmental sources (peer feedback) and subsequent behavioural regulation (self-regulated revision). However, the causal role of students’ self-reflections has not been established. The consistent findings in the literature mitigate this concern that providing reviews 99 does improve students’ writing performance (e.g., Lee, 2017; Liu & Carless, 2006; Patchan, 2011). In addition, the primary effect of documentation tools like the revision plan designed for the study appears to illuminate student cognition and cognitive self-regulation process. 7.4 Summary of the Chapter Guided by Research Question 3, this chapter reported findings based on the qualitative data collected from the semi-structured interviews related to students’ benefits of two socio-cognitive sources, i.e., receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan. As we can see, this group of Chinese EFL students benefited from the self-regulated revision process across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge-level through receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by self-reflecting feedback received. In Chapter 8, the concluding chapter of the thesis, I will summarize the key findings and contributions of the study and implications for further research. 100 Chapter 8: Conclusion and Implications 8.1 Introduction In Chapter 8, the final chapter of the thesis, I highlight the findings related to participants’ ICT-mediated peer feedback (Chapter 5), their self-regulated (reflecting and planning) processes of revision in response to peer feedback (Chapter 6), and students’ benefits of receiving peer feedback and planning for revision by reflecting on peer feedback received (Chapter 7). Discussions of theoretical, thematic, methodological contributions, pedagogical implications, and future research follow. In my self-reflections and concluding remarks, I consider my personal self-regulated learning process of revision in EFL writing through my self-narration as a novice EFL writing researcher and practitioner. 8.2 Summary of Findings Previous studies on the content of peer review have focused on three significant issues, including the reliability and validity of peer review in comparison with teacher review (e.g., Cho & Schunn, 2007; Zhang et al., 2020); specific features that help students’ knowledge building and writing skills development (e.g., Lunstrom & Baker, 2009; Nelson & Schunn, 2009; Patchan, 2011); and students’ perceptions and attitudes toward conducting peer review (Kaufman & Schunn, 2011). The current study investigates another critical issue: How did students make use of these peer reviews as social sources to shape their self-regulated learning process of revision? More specifically, how did students self-reflect on peer feedback and plan for their second draft writing? Four major findings are found from this qualitative inquiry: 1) Peer feedback covers both high- and low-level writing issues but is more concerned with high-level content issues; 101 2) Students decide to incorporate most of the peer feedback on both high- and low-level writing issues into revision and ignore relatively few comments because of the disagreement with peers; 3) When peer comments are too general and confusing or contradictory, students still make subsequent high- and low-level revisions through seeking clarification and advice from peers, collecting information from the internet, and checking e-dictionary, Grammarly, and academic references; 4) Students benefited from this peer-mediated self-regulated revision process, across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge-levels, through both receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by self-reflecting on feedback received. These findings suggest that receiving peer feedback and drafting a revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback are useful socio-cognitive sources that could shape students’ self-regulated revision behaviours and trigger new rounds of self-regulation. 8.3 Contributions of the Study This exploratory qualitative study contributes to the theoretical, thematic, and methodological exploration of the self-regulated revision process in response to ICT-mediated peer feedback. 8.3.1 Theoretical Contribution The socio-cognitive theoretical perspective of the self-regulated learning process of writing and revision, proposed by educational psychologist Barry J. Zimmerman (1995, 2002, 2013), is quite inclusive in integrating three sources of factors of regulation, personal, environmental, and behavioural. The current study offers a theoretically justified account of the self-regulated revision process by exploring socio-cognitive components of self-regulation. The 102 current study illustrates how conducting online ICT-mediated peer review (environmental self-regulation process) and how planning for revisions by self-reflecting on peer feedback (cognitive self-regulation process) guide Chinese college-level EFL students’ self-regulated revision (behavioural self-regulation process). Students indicated that such a self-regulated learning process of revision is beneficial for their learning of college-level English writing across cognitive, affective, social, and knowledge levels. 8.3.2 Thematic Contribution As explained in Chapter 6, this group of students could identify and balance high-level content and low-level language issues based on their self-reflections on peer feedback and further revision planning. This strongly indicates that college-level EFL students in China can make use of socio-cognitive sources in the larger sociocultural environment like peer review, revision planning, and self-reflection. Thematically, the present in-depth qualitative study also addresses three main issues in EFL writing instruction and self-regulated learning literature. First of all, writing and revision without teacher feedback can lead to substantial changes with appropriate online technologies’ facilitation (e.g., the QQ platform in the present study), at least within college student groups. From a self-regulation perspective, this finding shows the efficacy of writing and rewriting when students are put into a learning environment where a complex set of working assignments are given, where developmental instructions are made clear, and where peers can provide feedback to each other for revision. The finding is fascinating and inspiring. It suggests the promises of online ICT tools work out when they marry well-designed instruction informed by writing learning science. Secondly, planning for revision by reflecting on peer feedback at the college level also reveals important facets of EFL writing and revision practices. This group of college-level EFL 103 students in China can produce revision plans for both high-level content and low-level language issues when instructed with a checklist to do so. Moreover, students can stick to a more workable revision plan by deeply reflecting on peer feedback. From a self-regulation perspective, such consistent planning behaviour suggests that students, to some degree, could monitor their writing and revision process through task planning. Thirdly, students’ peer feedback can be highly content-oriented without teacher intervention, as long as guidelines are provided. Peer review has long been a critical issue in writing research since it is an integral part of writing instruction and self-regulated learning strategies. Unlike many findings in prior empirical studies that peers are incapable of performing as writing evaluators since they are only novices in learning to write, the current study demonstrates that although the present students were only trained about how to conduct ICT-mediated peer review by watching a video about review models and samples, peers as reviewers could provide very detailed and elaborate evaluations both on high- and low-level issues, and peers as authors could integrate peer reviewers’ opinions into revised drafts. ICT-mediated peer review is instrumental in students’ self-regulated revision process and better writing performance from a self-regulated learning point of view. 8.3.3 Methodological Contribution The current exploratory study demonstrated that ICT-mediated peer feedback as a social self-regulating source together with students’ self-reflections on peer feedback for revision planning as the cognitive self-regulatory source could facilitate EFL students’ self-regulated revision behaviours. Newly developed research instruments that investigate EFL students’ self-regulated revision process was used to elicit several kinds of data including a question-driven revision plan and students’ self-reflections on peer review. This is in contrast to goals and 104 instructions given by the teacher and students’ revisions without articulating a revision plan in prior research. As noted, most previous studies ignored the significant underlying differences, perceptions, and experiences of Chinese college-level EFL students during the self-regulated revision planning process. In the current study, a revision worksheet was developed to document this self-regulated revision process when students reflected on peer feedback and made decisions for revision. Other qualitative data collection methods using self-reflection prompts and follow-up semi-structured interviews were also applied to explore this self-regulated learning process of revision in-depth within the Chinese college-level EFL context. 8.4 Implications of the Study This exploratory qualitative study has significant implications for teaching and learning EFL writing at the college level in China. In many Chinese college-level EFL classrooms, students’ writing learning is self-regulated by students themselves without any guidelines. There are few teaching and learning resources in many Chinese universities so EFL students probably complete four years of English language studies without understanding how to write general and academic English effectively. To some extent, this may hinder their further academic and professional development. As mentioned earlier, academic and professional success, to a great extent, depends upon writing capacity since writing is the norm in the academic world as well as the business world. The current study shows that socio-cognitive self-regulatory sources, such as peer feedback, online ICT tools, task planning, and self-reflections, do contribute to students’ substantial self-regulated revision behaviours. These sources are also beneficial in enabling students to make use of the self-regulatory sources in the larger social-environmental context of EFL writing for enhancing writing performance and writing skills development. EFL writing 105 teachers could consider using these self-regulatory sources in multi-draft writing assignments. Such self-regulatory sources are done by students themselves without too much teacher involvement compared to the traditional teacher-centered writing pedagogy. Students are increasingly becoming self-regulated learners of writing, developing an understanding of fundamental English writing issues and peers’ comments, and establishing a basis for self-reflection which feeds back into and enhances writing performance. From the perspective of writing teachers, the goal of fostering self-regulated learning of EFL writing and revision has substantial implications for how writing teachers should organize writing programs and interact with student writers. In particular, self-regulation develops in a learning context where students have many opportunities to engage in complex, meaningful writing tasks, control the level of challenges, and evaluate their work and collaborate with their peers (Zhang, Schunn, & Baikadi, 2017). The concept of self-regulated learning is more likely to develop in learning contexts where teachers guide rather than direct students’ learning (Brown & Campione, 1994; Zimmerman, 1995). In the role of facilitator, writing teachers can foster students’ micro-process development in English writing skills and domain knowledge, implementing nonthreatening practices that encourage students to attempt challenges and interpret errors as opportunities to learn (Perry & Drummon, 2002). To be more specific, writing teachers should provide clear writing prompts, clarified review rubrics with writing models, and give students training on how to conduct peer reviews and offer effective feedback. Of course, in self-regulated revision processes, writing teachers’ roles are never diminished. What is different is that teachers are not like actors on the stage, but more like a director behind the stage. For teachers who already use writing as a critical way of learning, these self-regulatory sources serve as essential information about students’ revision intentions to 106 help teachers provide further practical guidance. For example, the revision plans might be combined or integrated with teachers and students’ assignment expectations. Writing teachers could use students’ coding and planning worksheets as references to better understand students’ needs and facilitate student self-efficacy and motivation in learning EFL writing. Furthermore, using an online or offline ICT learning tool proved essential because it reduced the logistics involved in sending and receiving documents, strengthened the connections between students as a shared learning community, and supported the sustainable development of writing with multiple drafts and peer review. Compared with offline writing, the online ICT tools may be more enticing to teachers since they do not require teachers to grade student writing or leave remarks on paper and are, therefore, comparatively more effective in handling large writing datasets. Take the QQ platform as an example. The group chat interface on the QQ platform can be quickly established in large classes as long as students have an internet-enabled phone or computer in hand. From the perspective of EFL student writers, these helpful self-regulatory sources could, to some extent, empower the students to take more responsibility in becoming better writers. Illuminated by the importance of goal setting and the instruction on how to give specific and procedural goals at the very beginning and in-between writing phases, students could produce texts with more planned procedural strategies. However, the direct effect of goal setting on an individual paper’s writing quality might be very modest. Over time, writing goals could be better integrated with the writing task requirement and better approximate students‘ writing needs. Further, ICT-mediated peer review is a cooperative learning activity for students. In the current study, multiple online reviews work as a cooperative working strategy and an evaluation mechanism. Students are playing the roles of peer reviewers just like those for journal 107 publishing, a real-life profession. Such an authoritative role engages students in more than being a reader but a critical evaluator. It pushes students into an environment where the integration and respect for different perspectives and views, individual accountability, acceptance of different opinions are highly desirable. In this exchange with peers, a high level of autonomy occurred. On a broader level, the current study closes the loop between educational practices, educational data research, and educational outcomes. Educational data mining is an emerging field of study to understand better how students learn and improve the learning process. The elicited peer reviewing and students’ psychological data in the present research informs pedagogical practices in emerging educational-technological environments such as the QQ platform, validates educational theories and models like the self-regulated learning theory and socio-cognitive theory of writing revision, evaluates the efficacy of online technology-enhanced learning, and bridges learning analytics and pedagogical theories. Using the data mining methods can support educational practitioners and students to make their learning decisions in a multimodal context. 8.5 Limitations and Directions for Future Research Several limitations of the current study need to be addressed in future work. Overall, the current general approach should be replicated with other kinds of writing assignments, different kinds of peer review rubrics, and students of different writing levels. Other approaches to document students’ self-reflective processes in response to peer feedback should also be explored to maximize efficiency and validity. For example, future research could use an experimental design with a control group, so documenting revision planning by self-reflecting peer feedback could be controlled carefully, and causal claims could be supported. However, students’ mental processes when reading peer feedback are hard to capture in authentic 108 classroom contexts, so the current exploratory qualitative study does contribute significant data. Thus, further studies with different writing learning contexts are suggested. Since the present revision worksheet likely under-reported insights gathered during reviewing, techniques such as think-aloud during reviewing may provide more complete records. Similarly, the use of sources during revision (especially including self-editing) could be observed more directly by observing students during their revision process. Students could also be asked to name other input sources, such as their use of the writing center or outside-of-class friends and materials. The causal effects on revision, and more importantly, on learning need to be further investigated. Further, the revision worksheet was found to be very efficient in collecting students’ self-coded peer feedback received and documenting their reflective thinking and revision planning processes. However, it might have made students more aware of their thinking and planning processes, i.e., to a certain extent, the revision worksheet might have stimulated students’ metacognitive awareness of writing and revision, and thus twisted the data collected for the present research. Future studies could explore how the revision worksheet could be used as an interventional tool to improve students’ engagement in the (meta)-cognitive self-regulation process and develop their self-regulated revision skills in EFL writing. As previous studies suggested, trained peer review can lead to better results in the incorporation of peer feedback into future drafts. However, in the current study, there was little in-class training on how to conduct ICT-mediated peer review in the context of an online writing and peer review tool for EFL writing. Future research needs to explore whether training could enhance better peer review. In addition, peer review can be a crucial channel for the training of critical thinking, 109 which is a core component in the self-regulated learning process (Phan, 2010). Peer review requires students to sift through information and materials, determine what is relevant and redundant, comment on what is understood and what is not, and infer the orientation for further development. Those are all core skills in critical thinking development. Undergoing this peer review process, students become more effective writers through deepening engagement and positive associations with other students (Gottschalk & Hjortshoj, 2004, p. v). Future study for a more pedagogical implication of ICT-mediated peer review for cognitive critical thinking improvement poses as a valuable orientation for ongoing research. 8.6 Personal Reflection: Becoming a Strategic Self-Regulated Learner of EFL Writing Across East Asia, self-regulated learning is being associated with the kinds of “21st-century learning skills” (Butler, Schnellert, & Perry, 2017) that schools need to foster. Self-regulated learning in Chinese college-level EFL writing is critical because it entails students’ adaptive engagement in various writing learning activities within particular environments (Fan & Xu, 2020). I first heard and learned about the self-regulated learning model of writing and revision in 2017 when I was taking the course “English Composition I for EFL” as a bachelor student at the university where I in turn conducted this research in 2021. The writing teacher in this first-year EFL writing course believed that Chinese college-level student writers could engage in classroom writing learning activities like peer review, develop feedback literacy, and enhance EFL writing performance through actively engaging in the peer-mediated self-regulated learning process of writing and revision. I shared similar EFL writing teaching and learning beliefs and gained a lot of field knowledge about college-level English writing and revision and Zimmerman’s socio-cognitive theoretical view of the self-regulated writing and revision model during my learning in that course. 110 I remember that the teacher designed the self-regulated writing and revision activities through various socio-cognitive sources. For example, before writing, the writing teacher gave me detailed instructions on genre writing through close reading and in-class peer-to-peer discussion of how the model essay followed the genre structure. I was taught, trained, and checked on four essential writing skills: unity, support, coherence, and low-level writing dimensions (grammar, word use, and spelling). Later, I was required to seek peer comments on my paper and offer oral commentary to my peers on either the group or the private chat interface of the QQ platform. When our peer review activity ended, each of us received feedback from three to five peers. I had one week to revise my first draft and submitted the draft to the online discussion board along with my personal reflective goals. I benefited from being involved in this self-regulated learning process because I felt peer’s comments were helpful for writing my second draft. In 2021, as I prepared for the research proposal for my M.A. in TESL thesis project, I reflected on my personal learning experience in the writing class and believed that it was worth investigating the self-regulated process from peer feedback to revision, i.e., how students respond to peer feedback and planning for revision. This thinking process of peer feedback, which is highly dynamic with interactive regulating factors, attracted my research interests. Thus, I developed a revision worksheet tool, containing one peer feedback coding sheet and one revision planning sheet to allow students to articulate and verbalize their psychological process in response to peer feedback received. I hoped this inquiry would bring some fresh insights to facilitate students becoming strategic self-regulated learners of EFL writing and revision. When I was collecting and analyzing data, I felt very excited that 12 participants received relatively balanced peer feedback with various high- and low-level writing issues, and they 111 indicated that the socio-cognitive sources involved in the revision process were beneficial and they were very willing to utilize these sources in the future. I was also delighted to see students could strategically make subsequent high- and low-level revisions through seeking clarification and advice from peers, collecting information from the internet, and checking e-dictionary, Grammarly, and academic references, even when their peer comments received are too general and confusing or contradictory due to having multiple reviewers. Overall, I resonate and share similar experiences and feelings with these college students. I am deeply convinced that receiving peer feedback by conducting ICT-mediated peer review and drafting a workable revision plan by reflecting on peer feedback received are valuable socio-cognitive sources that could help us become more strategic self-regulated learners of EFL writing and revision. 8.7 Final Remarks The development of this M.A. in TESL thesis project could not have succeeded without the invaluable encouragement from professors and friends whom I was incredibly fortunate to meet during the whole research process. 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Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 126 Appendices Appendix I Letter of Initial Contact 127 Appendix II Advertisement to Recruit Participants 128 Appendix III Letter of Permission 129 Appendix IV Participant Consent Form Department of Language & Literacy Education 100 – 2034 Lower Mall Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z2 Tel: (604) 822-5788 Fax: (604) 822-3154 Email: lled.educ@ubc.ca Informed Consent Form Project Title: Exploring EFL learners’ self-regulated process of revision Principal Investigator: Dr. Ling Shi, Professor Department of Language and Literacy Education Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver Email: ling.shi@ubc.ca Co-Investigator: Wentao Li, M.A. in TESL Student Department of Language and Literacy Education Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver Email: liwt427@alumni.ubc.ca This study will be conducted in fulfillment of Co-Investigator Wentao Li’s M.A. thesis research. Purpose: What is this study for and about? The current exploratory qualitative study aims to shed new light on the self-regulated process of revision from a socio-cognitive perspective for EFL students in China. We want to explore how a group of Chinese EFL students apply socio-cognitive strategies to self-regulate their revision behaviours as they reflect on peer feedback and draft a revision plan for their writing. We aim to identify whether and how peer review activity leads to students’ self-reflections for better writing. Specifically, we focus on how the online peer review facilitates students’ macro-level (content) and micro-level (language) writing issues and help them become more self-regulated learners of EFL writing. The purpose is to understand how EFL students can benefit from peer review as the cognitive and socio-cognitive self-regulating source to achieve writing improvement. Study procedure: What is involved in your participation? 1. If you agree to participate in this study as a non-focal participant, you will be asked to (1) complete the revision plan worksheet, and (2) allow the researcher to collect your draft and revised writing samples. You are supposed to use this revision plan worksheet to code peer feedback, decide to follow/ignore the peer feedback, and generate a revision plan with other extra thoughts by 130 answering the related questions. The Co-Investigator Wentao Li will print out the hardcopy of the worksheet and distribute the worksheet to you before revision. The revision plan worksheet is name-based and the Co-Investigator Wentao Li will replace the real names with pseudonyms when students have submitted the worksheet after the first draft revision. It takes about 20-30 minutes to finish the worksheet. 2. You can also in this study as a focal participant by participating in a face-to-face interview with Wentao Li to talk about your experiences of the revision process in addition to completing the revision plan worksheet and allowing the researcher to collect your writing samples. The interview will take about 20-30 minutes and be audio-recorded with your permission. During the interview, you can choose not to answer the questions you do not feel comfortable answering. The audio-recorded data will be transcribed and later analyzed. The exact interview time and location will be arranged at your convenience. The interview will be conducted in Mandarin Chinese. Your responses to the items on the final page of this form will indicate if and how you wish to participate in this study. Publication: What will be done with the information collected in this study? This research project will be conducted as part of the Co-Investigator Wentao Li’s Master of Arts in TESL degree, and thus will be accessible to the general public in the form of a master’s thesis. The results of this study will be submitted for publication in a refereed journal article and presented in academic conferences. If you would like to know the results of this study, we will be happy to send you a summary of the results via email. The future publication might involve granting open access to research data. This means that the data might be stored electronically and could become accessible to other researchers. Please be aware that once the data are made available, the participants will not be able to withdraw their data, although any identifiers will be removed. Risks: Are there any risks of your participation? As our study involves in-depth self-reflection on peer feedback, revision behaviour, and disclosure of private thoughts, it is possible that your participation in the interviews and revision plan worksheet might evoke emotionally challenging experiences. To mitigate these potential risks, you always have the right to choose what to share and how much to share when completing the revision plan worksheet and interviewing with our Co-Investigator Wentao Li. You don’t have to share information that may trigger painful memories or challenging emotions that make you feel uncomfortable. Your participation is entirely voluntary, and there are no consequences for choosing not to participate in the study or withdrawing from the study at any time for any reason. Compensation and benefits: What are the benefits of participating? This study offers opportunities for you to reflect on your EFL writing and revision process from a self-regulation perspective. Research has shown that EFL students could achieve more when involved in self-regulated process of revision like seeking helps from teacher and peers, setting revision goals, and doing self-reflection. By participating in our study, you can critically reflect on your perceptions and experiences when involved in the self-regulated process of EFL writing and revision. 131 As a token of our appreciation, you will be given a ￥25 RMB Gift Card (about $5 CAD) as a non-focal participant or a ￥50 RMB Gift Card (about $10 CAD) as a focal participant at the end of the study. Confidentiality: How will your identity and information be protected? Your confidentiality will be respected. Information that discloses your identity will not be released without your consent. Only the researchers will have access to the information you provide. You will not be identified by name in any reports of the completed study. The audio interview data will be encrypted. The transcriptions will be password-protected and will not contain any real names or other identifiers. After the completion of the study, data records will be kept on a computer hard disk stored at the Principal Investigator’s office at UBC. Contact: Who can you contact if you have questions or concerns about the study? If you have any questions or concerns regarding this research project, please feel free to contact the Principal Investigator Dr. Ling Shi (ling.shi@alumni.ubc.ca) or the Co-Investigator Wentao Li (liwt427@alumni.ubc.ca). If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your experiences while participating in this study, contact the Research Participant Complaint Line in the UBC Office of Research Ethics at 604-822-8598 or if long distance e-mail RSIL@ors.ubc.ca or call toll free 1-877-822-8598. 132 Appendix V Participant Assent Form Department of Language & Literacy Education 100 – 2034 Lower Mall Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z2 Tel: (604) 822-5788 Fax: (604) 822-3154 Email: lled.educ@ubc.ca Exploring EFL learners’ self-regulated process of revision Participant Assent Form I have read and understand the information in the letter regarding Wentao Li’s Master of Arts in TESL thesis project entitled: “Exploring EFL learners’ self-regulated process of revision”. I understand that: ● My participation in this study is entirely voluntary, and I have the rights to refuse to participate and withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason or suffering for any negative consequence on my study. ● My signature and indication of willingness to participate indicate that I consent to participate in this study. ● My signature below indicates that I have received a copy of this informed consent form for my own records. Fulfillment of three conditions with asterisks (*) below means that you agree to participate in the study as a focal participant. Please check (with X) *1. I agree to allow the researcher to collect my writing samples. _________ *2. I agree to complete the revision plan worksheet. _________ *3. I agree to participate and be audiotaped in a post-study interview. _________ 4. I do not agree to participate in this study. _________ _______________________________________ _____________ Participant Signature Date _____________________________________________________________ Printed (legal) name of the participant signing above Optional: If you wish to receive a summary of the research result, please indicate you email address in the space below: _____________________________________________________________ Email address 133 Appendix VI Revision Worksheet Department of Language & Literacy Education 100 – 2034 Lower Mall Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z2 Tel: (604) 822-5788 Fax: (604) 822-3154 Email: lled.educ@ubc.ca Revision worksheet 修改計畫工作表 (English/Chinese, for all participants) This worksheet helps you to plan your first draft revision. Please code and summarize the peer feedback you have received by answering the following questions. The planning process should take about 10-20 minutes. You can then follow the plan to revise your essay. When you finish, please submit the worksheet and the revised essay to the Co-Investigator Wentao Li. 這張工作表可以幫助你計畫初稿修改。請通過回答以下問題對你收到的同伴回饋進行編碼和總結。計畫過程大約需要 10-20分鐘。然後你可以按照計畫修改你的文章。當完成修改後，請將工作表和修改後的二稿提交給合作研究員李文滔。 1. Indicate the total number of peer feedback that you have received: ________ 請指出你收到的同伴回饋總數： 2. Of the peer feedback you received, indicate how many focused on the following writing issues: 在你收到的同伴回饋中，請指出有多少條同伴回饋關注以下寫作問題： ________A. Unity 中心突出 Covering a clear central idea, crossing off irrelevant content 有明確的中心思想，刪去無關的內容 ________B. Support 內容充實 Using specific, typical, and adequate evidence to support the central idea 用具體的、典型的、充分的證據來支撐中心思想 ________C. Coherence 銜接連貫 Presenting strong connection, good flow, and clear logical order 銜接緊密，內容流暢，邏輯順序清晰 ________d. Grammar 語法 Using standard written English with good mechanics (e.g., the proper use of tenses, passive voice, modal auxiliaries, subject-verb agreement, etc.) 使用標準的書面英語 (例如：正確使用時態、被動語態、情態動詞、主謂一致等) ________e. Spelling 拼寫 Forming English word correctly from individual letters 能夠將單個字母組成正確的英語單詞 134 ________f. Word Use 用詞 Word choice, adding/deleting/replacing appropriate word(s) for clarity 詞彙選擇，增加/刪除/替換適當的詞彙使表達更清楚 ________g. Other 其他：________ Please identify the writing issues 請指出其他寫作問題 3. Indicate the peer feedback that you plan to follow: 請指出你打算（在修改中）採納的同伴回饋，並闡明原因： a. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: b. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: c. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: 4. Indicate the feedback that you plan to ignore and explain why: 請指出你打算（在修改中）忽略的同伴回饋，並闡明原因： a. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: b. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: c. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: 5. Indicate if there is any feedback you are going to seek advice or clarification from your peers and explain why: 請指出有哪些同伴回饋需要進一步尋求建議或澄清，並解釋原因： a. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: b. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: c. ______________________________________________________________________________ Why: 135 6. Indicate if you have other extra thoughts about how you are going to revise the paper: 請指出任何其他關於如何進一步修改文章的想法： a. ______________________________________________________________________________ b. ______________________________________________________________________________ c. ______________________________________________________________________________ 136 Appendix VII Interview Guidelines Department of Language & Literacy Education 100 – 2034 Lower Mall Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z2 Tel: (604) 822-5788 Fax: (604) 822-3154 Email: lled.educ@ubc.ca Interview guidelines (Chinese/English, for focal participants) 訪談提綱 1. 你對修改後的寫作二稿滿意嗎？為什麼？ (Are you satisfied with the revised second draft? And why?) 2. 你在二稿修改過程中有哪些挑戰？容易修改的部分有哪些？ (Are there any challenges in your second draft revision? What are the easy parts to revise in your essay?) 3. 同伴回饋是否幫助你修改？ (Did peer feedback help you revise?) 4. 修改計畫工作表是否幫助你修改？如果有，在哪些方面？ (Did the revision plan worksheet help you revise? If so, in what ways?) 5. 你是否願意在未來繼續使用同伴回饋和制定修訂計畫？ (Are you willing to continue using peer feedback and drafting a revision plan in the future?) 6. 你在這次修改中的收穫有哪些？ (What have you learned from the revision process?) 137 Appendix VIII Peer Review Rubrics Grammar Spelling WordingCovering a clear centralidea, no irrelevant contentUsing specific, typical, andadequate evidence tosupport the centralevidencePresenting strongconnection, good flow,good transitions, and clearorderUsing standard writtenEnglish (e.g., tenses,passive voice, and modalauxiliaries)Forming English wordcorrectly from individuallettersWord choice,adding/deleting/replacingappropriate word(s) forclarity1. Does the essay have aclearly stated thesis?1. Has the writer backedup each main point withone extended example orseveral shorter examples?1. Has the writer usedtransition words to helpreaders follow the train ofthought?1. Has the writer usedspecific rather than generalwords?2. Is there any irrelevantmaterial that should beeliminated or rewritten?2. Does the writer haveenough detailed support?2. Has the writer provideda concluding paragraph towrap up the essay?2. Has the writer avoidedwordiness and beenconcise?7Very clear thesisstatement, no irrelevantcontentThe supportive detail isvery pertinent, typical, andappropriateSentences are tightlyconnected, with goodtransitions and a clear6 Between 7 and 5 Between 7 and 5 Between 7 and 55 Clear thesis statement withsome irrelevant contentThe supportive detail ispertinent, typical, andappropriateSentences connect witheach other, although thesentence order is not very4 Between 5 and 3 Between 5 and 3 Between 5 and 33 Vague thesis statementwith many irrelevantThe supportive detail is notvery pertinent, typical, andSentences are looselyconnected, with a few2 Between 3 and 1 Between 3 and 1 Between 3 and 11 Off-topic Little supportive detail No flowSentence SkillsCoherenceSupportUnityBetween 3 and 1The low-level dimensions are used incorrectlyDefinitionScoringguideHas the writer avoidedspelling errors？Has the writer avoidedgrammatical errors?QuestionsThe low-level dimensions are used very effectivelyBetween 7 and 5The low-level dimensions are used effectivelyBetween 5 and 3Most of the low-level dimensions are used correctly138 Appendix IX Writing Samples* Participant #1 Yara First Draft Second Draft What is one of the most meaningful and challenging career, you may wonder, and my answer is definitely diplomatist. A diplomatist is the official representative of a country dispatched by your government to another country. It is a challenging occupation that acquires professional skills also enjoying granted privilege. Diplomatist play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. What they expect to do is prevent the situation from worsening and help two sides reach a compromise. In addition, it is such a meaningful job that you can have an insight into the marvelous culture and customs of a different country. What is more, helping to deal with all kinds of issues to protect your compatriots and safeguard the interests of your country is the best way to achieve self-worth. Becoming a diplomatist is not only appealing to an individual, but also a way to sacrifice your life to a country even to the progress of world peace and development of humanity. What is one of the most meaningful and challenging career, you may wonder, and my answer is definitely diplomatist. A diplomatist is the official representative of a country dispatched by your government to another country. To be a diplomatist is not easy at all, because it is a challenging occupation that acquires professional skills, ranging from great grasp of foreign languages, the ability of making wise decisions to acute insight into world situation. To begin with, diplomatists play a significant role if two countries have disagreements or even worse, confrontation. What they expect to do is prevent the situation from worsening and help two sides reach a compromise. From ancient to modern times, famous diplomatists such as Yanzi, Suwu, Gu weijun, Zhou enlai, all show their quick reaction and calmness. In addition, it is such a meaningful job that you can experience marvelous culture and customs of different countries. What is more, helping to deal with all kinds of issues to protect your compatriots and safeguard the interests of your country is the best way to achieve self-worth. In this fast-changing world, becoming a diplomatist is not only a way to join the process of history, but also to sacrifice your life to your country, even to the progress of world peace and development of humanity. * Please note that these texts are reproduced verbatim from the students’ handwriting or word document without correcting the errors. 139 Participant #2 Zoe First Draft Second Draft Have you ever thought about taking translation as life-long career? If you have interest in it. I’ll show you 3 main advantages of being a translator. First of all, when translating, there is a chance for you to broaden your horizons by contacting with different cultures. Meanwhile, the greatest thing about translation is that you make a bridge between different countries and the people from different nationalities. This is the most significant part that translation brings to you and the world. Last but not least, there is a plenty of time for you to work, so you can manage your own time freely. I am sure it will be an excellent opportunity for English learner to persue further study. Absolutely, the income will also increase through persistent practices. In the end, I’d like to share a view on translation with you, which is ‘using another language to retell someone’s words seems like being in another space-time to figure out their fates.’ Have you ever thought about taking transliteration as lifelong career? If you intend in it, I will show you the three main advantages of being a translator. First and foremost, when translating, there will be a chance for you to broaden your horizons by contacting with different cultures. Meanwhile, there is a plenty of time for you to work. So, you can manage your own time freely. I'm sure it will be an excellent opportunity for English learners to pursue further study. Absolutely, the income will also increase through persistent practices. Last but not least, the greatest thing in translation is that it makes a bridge between diverse cultures and race. With the help of translator, world’s civilization can be permeated all together. This is the most significant part of being a translator. In the end, I’d like to share you a view on translation. ‘using another language to retell someone’s words seems like being in another space-time to figure out their fates.’ 140 Participant #3 Lisa First Draft Second Draft The most interesting job I think is food taster & reviewer. They will travel over seas to get another places taste delicious food, with the title of “facility trip”! During their trips, they can not only satisfy their stomaches with yummy dishes, but also admire beautiful sceneries around the world and meet kind and enthusiastic people in different areas. After your trips, you can post articles with colorful pictures and concise descriptions to your own website channel or blog. It would be very happy to share your own food tasting experiences to others. If you have seen Johnny’s TV programme and read Cai Lan’s books, you must can’t bear the attraction of this job! The most interesting job I think is food taster & reviewer. First of all, you will travel over sea to get another places tasting delicious food with special flavor, and use the title of “facility trip”! And then, during their trips, you can not only satisfy your stomachs with palatable dishes, but also admire beautiful sceneries around the world and meet enthusiastic people in different areas. Moreover, you have an access to different kinds of culture. Finally, after the trips, you can post your experiences on blogs or online channel with colorful pictures and concise descriptions. It would be very happy to share your own food tasting reviews to others. If you have seen Johnny’s TV programme or read Cai Lan’s books, you must know what I mean. No one can resist the attraction of this job! 141 Participant #4 Zara First Draft Second Draft Are you the expressive emotional type who like to create and entertain? Then designer might be an ideal occupation. A professional designer require knowledge related to geometry and art, which are of great interest foe one to learn. The best part of becoming a designer is that the time is comparatively flexible, and you can sit in front of the computer in your comfortable home with a cup of coffee. More importantly, your aesthetic taste will surely develop, which means you are more sensitive to the scenery in your life: fragrant flowers, clear-blue sky…So don’t hesitate to be a designer! Are you the expressive emotional type who like to create and express yourself? There exists an occupation that perfectly suits you-designer. Design is essentially an expression of beauty that requires creativity and passion. Here are some benifits of being a designer. To begin with, a professional designer requires knowledge related to geometry and art, and are of great interest for one to learn. Also, the best part about becoming a designer is the sense accomplishment of having your design put into reality. The praise for your creativity from the clients will surely bring you happiness. And more importantly, design is a occupation that can enhance your aesthetic taste, which means you are more likely to be inspired by the scenery in your life: fragrant flowers, clear blue sky... So don’t hesitate to be a designer! 142 Participant #5 Mike First Draft Second Draft If I have got to choose a career, being a wildlife conservator would be a nice choice. That’s because you have chance to see all kinds of wildlife even the endangered species. And you will learn about knowledge which includes the laws about protecting wildlife or something like that. Also, maybe you will go to some different place. You can experience diverse culture and climate. This can not only broaden your horizon but add the joy of life. When it comes to choose a career, being a wildlife conservator definitely would be a nice choice. That’s because you will have chance to see all kinds of wildlife even the endangered species such as Chinese sturgeon, Amur Tiger, etc. More often than not, you will learn about knowledge which includes the laws about protecting wildlife or something like that. Also, you will go to some different places. You can experience diverse culture and variable climates. This can not only broaden your horizon but add the joy of your life. 143 Participant #6 Tina First Draft Second Draft You must dream of the future occupation. Now I am going to share with you a fantastical job: the food taster. As a taster, you can eat countless delicacy for free. Try to imagine the picture that you taste food coming from all over the world, such as the lobster and abalone that you can’t eat in daily life. What an amezing job it is. And what your task is to write down the feeling after you eat the delicacy. This essay may be published by newspaper to help people discover the delicacy. Besides, you can travel the world to taste the various delicacy. You can taste juicy beef in England. You can fly to the African eating the sweet banana and coconut. Every time you travel a place, you can make new friends and learn the totally different custom. For example, you can see animals run in the endless grassland in Australian. You can make foreign friends. You can eat turkey in Christmas with American. All in all, being a food taster is a good choice in your future. You must be dreaming of the future occupation. Now I am going to share with you a fantastical job: a food taster. First, as a taster, you can eat countless delicacy for free. Try to imagine a picture that you taste food coming from all over the world, such as the lobster and abalone that you can't eat in daily life. What an amazing job it is! The second attractive point is you can gain much sense of success. What you write about your perception of delicacy may be taken consideration by others, when they are hesitating whether eating it. Your suggestions may decide others decision. The third, you can travel around the world because of your career. Tasks of the food taster are to eat food. You would go to England for the juicy beef, and to Japan for the sushi. You can travel the world while you are working. Every time you travel a place, you can make new friends and learn the totally different custom. For example, you may see animals run in the endless grassland in Australian. All in all, being a food taster is a good choice in your future. 144 Participant #7 Rose First Draft Second Draft If you are fond of cartoon characters and enthusiastic about fictitious stories, comic artist is a career that you can’t miss. Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. Besides, you will have a special experience while you travel in the world that you have created. Last but not least, because the Chinese market lacks the talents of comic artists, you don't need to worry about the pay. Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work, which means you will get attention from fans and your potential clients. So, what are you waiting for? Grab your pen and create your own fascinating kingdom! If you are fond of cartoon characters and enthusiastic about fictitious stories, comic artist is a career that you can’t miss. Absolutely, you will gain much joy and a nice pay. Firstly, it is of great fun that you can decide the detailed features of your character, such as hair type, complexion, stature and so on. So, you are supposed to have a good command of drawing skills, which will help you create more vivid characters. Besides, you will have a special experience while you travel in the world that you have created. You will feel pity for their sorrow and laugh when they gain happiness, even though you know these are not true. Last but not least, because the Chinese market lacks the talents of comic artists, you don't need to worry about the pay. It can up to 100,00 every chapter comic, if your comic is very popular. Also, with the development of the internet, there are more and more platforms where you can display your work. As a result, you will gradually get attention from fans and your potential clients. Moreover, your fans and potential clients will also encourage you to create more meaningful work. So, what are you waiting for? Grab your pen and create your own fascinating kingdom! 145 Participant #8 Julia First Draft Second Draft If the Creator gives me an opportunity to elect a career which I am interested in, I will choose to become a teacher without hesitation. To begin with, being a teacher means always spending time with the young people, which leads to living a very young life. Additionally, choosing to be a teacher equals choosing to live a stable life. Not only having a steady salary, but also having the guarantee of never being unemployed. Please devote yourself to learning more about teacher. If you are searching for an idealize and meaningful career which is fulling of most people’s dream, I would recommend strongly that you will select to become a teacher who shows the knowledge to the young students. First and foremost, being a teacher makes that you will always stay with the students who are in the prime of life, which leads that your personality will have remarkable improvement. Together with your students, you will be profoundly influenced to obtain a very young life style and it drives you to enhance more enthusiasm to work positively. In addition, as a member of the national system, you will have the enjoyment of the rich material benefits from our country at which people look with envy. As one of the most sacred profession, the teacher has a very profound and lasting history and is respected by all the people throughout the world. Last but not least, you will assume liability which is closely linked to your students’ future and you are going to have significant progress with the students to get new knowledge and to learn how to be the better one. What are you hesitating about? Please make up your mind and devote yourself to learning the information about teacher. 146 Participant #9 Mercer First Draft Second Draft If a job only needs to be at home and open the laptop to earn money, will you try do it? With the popularity of the Internet, the media carrying literature is becoming more and more popular. Network writer has become a new profession, and more and more accepted. Compared with traditional writers, network writers have lower requirements for literary accomplishment and lower professional threshold. While bringing popular works to the public, they can also get a good reward. Whether we take network writer as our main occupation or as our side occupation, it is always a good choice for us. So what are you waiting for? Try it now. If a job only needs to be at home and open the laptop to earn money, will you try to do it? With the popularity of the Internet, the media carrying literature is becoming more and more popular. Network writer has become a new profession, and more and more accepted. Compared with traditional writers, network writers have lower requirements for literary accomplishment and lower professional threshold. Also, if your works is very popular, then it’s easy to get a lot of money from the network platform. And if your works is very excellent, even can be published or adapted into a TV play, it will make you get a very good reward. What’s more, if you are worried about the income instability of this occupation, you can regard it as a second occupation. All in all, I believe it is a good choice for such a free and new career. So what are you waiting for? Try it now. 147 Participant #10 Milton First Draft Second Draft Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. This is not a job that fits for anybody, random person. I think it require a good command of programming technology. It would be so much better if your creotivity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. This job is worth a shot, it won’t let you down. Game developer, a career I’ve been dreaming of, attracts many teenagers who enjoy playing video games for sure. Whereas affection is not enough to make you a professional game developer. Thus, I think it is not a job that fits for anybody. First and foremost, it requires a good command of programming technology. Besides, it would be so much better if your creativity is rich. Because the characters and scenes of the games need to be design delicately, beautifully to fascinate players. Except for the challenging part, you can have fun during the game developing process. Moreover, you get a chance to broaden your horizon for so many ideas of your whole team are going to be shared. Furthermore, the happiness and the sense of pride you feel when your game is released successfully which took you a lot of effort will be way out of your imagination. Anyway, like what I mentioned above, this career definitely won’t let you down. Those who loves games, don’t hesitate to seize this opportunity. 148 Participant #11 Helen First Draft Second Draft As one of the most high-paid job, translator is an option that many people would choose. There are many attractive points in choosing this to be one’s career. First of all, for those ordinary people who are in love with literature but are not talented enough to create some works by themselves, translator is an ideal job. They can show their understanding of the masterpieces and recreate them in another way. In addition, being a translator gives people a great sense of achievement when others are reading their translation works. It’s an excellent career letting others get interested in something great, some fields they weren’t familiar with before, and this sometimes can strongly influence one’s life. It is very challenging, the professional terms changes and updates a lot, so the translator has to keep learning all the time and always be well prepared. So it doesn't make people boring in their career life like other jobs. I think translating is a great job which can enrich one’s life and knowledge, So it’s great to choose it as your lifelong career. As one of the most high-paid jobs, translator is an option that many people would choose. Most of the good translators can earn more than ten thousand per month. Except for the high salary, there are many other attractive points in choosing this to be one's career. First of all, for those ordinary people who are in love with literature but are not talented enough to create some works by themselves, translation is an ideal job. They can show their understanding of the masterpieces and recreate them in another way. In addition, being a translator gives people a great sense of achievement when others are reading their translation works. It can strongly influence one’s life, making people interested in something they didn’t familiar with. For example, the first translation of Sherlock Holmes introduced detective fictions to ordinary people for the first time. lt also had a profound impact on the later translation of names and proper nouns. Also, translating is very challenging, which makes this job full of interest. The professional terms changes and updates a lot, so the translator has to keep learning all the time and always be well prepared. In conclusion, translating is a great job which can enrich one’s life and knowledge, so it’s great to choose it as your lifelong career. 149 Participant #12 Zelda First Draft Second Draft On no account can you miss the passion of uploaders. An amazing, wonder-working work embraces the fame, self-identify and considerable income. There is better things than see own’s inspiration bear fruits and live on it? Better still, you can win a legion of funs who encourage you, cheer for you and company you. Different from other nine-to-five jobs, time is controlled by you, place is decide by you and no something like pressure. You work totally for dream and passion. Uploader is a budding job own many unknown chances. You know time is crawls on when you are hesitating. Come on! Be a uploader. On no account can you miss the passion of being an uploader for some video sharing platform like Bilibili. An amazing, wonder-working work embraces the fame, self-identify and considerable income. As a content creator, by taking vlog from all aspects of life, uploaders transform what they like to practical income. Is there better thing than see own’s inspiration bear fruit and live on it? What’s more, like famous uploader Lao Fan Qie, you can win a legend of funs who encourage you, cheer for you, and company you. Most importantly, different form other nine-to-five jobs, Time is controlled by you, place is decided by you, and no something like pressure. You can work totally for your own dream and passion. Lastly, uploader is a budding job own many unknown chances. You know time is crawl on when you are hesitating. Come on! Young blood. Be an uploader.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Teaching English as a Second Language
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Shi, Ling
Exploring revision as a self-regulated process in EFL writing
Text