Giving genre-based peer feedback in academic writing: sources of knowledge and skills, difficulties and challenges

Abstract

This case study examines postgraduate students’ practices, sources of knowledge, and difficulties and challenges in regard to providing genre-based peer feedback on their peers’ academic writing at a research-oriented university in Macau. The analysis of multiple sources of data including the students’ written feedback on their peers’ thesis drafts, the thesis drafts, semi-structured interviews and stimulated recalls revealed that while the participants were able to provide genre-based feedback, most of the feedback focused on the linguistic features, content and organisation of the theses, and helped the students meet the institutional requirements of what constitutes a thesis. The study also found that the participants perceived giving genre-based peer feedback to be difficult and challenging. Their difficulties stemmed from a lack of specific knowledge about the thesis genre, their concerns about their own linguistic proficiency, their concerns about the usefulness and correctness of their feedback, and the effects their criticism would have on the writers’ feelings and emotions.

Keywords:

• Academic writing
• peer feedback
• genre-based feedback
• postgraduate students

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shulin Yu

Dr.Shulin Yu is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China. His research interests include second language writing and classroom feedback and assessment in higher education. His publications have appeared in Assessing Writing, Language Teaching Research, Language Teaching, TESOL Quarterly, Studies in Educational Evaluation, Teaching and Teacher Education, System, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Educational Research Review, Studies in Higher Education, and Teaching in Higher Education.