An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Peer Review Technique

The major objective this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the peer review technique in an EFL wrting context. To achieve this objectives, a sample students were selected along with their composition instructor, and four instruments of data collection: peer comments, students¿ essays, students¿ questionnaire and teacher interview were employed. The students wrote 3 essays on different topics and they commented on each other¿s essays. Finally, their filled in a questionnaire and their instructor was interviewed. The results of the peer comments and the students¿ essays reveal that the students incorporated the majority of the peer comments in their final drafts. Moreover, the results reveal that the students incorporated more peer comments on grammar and mechanics than content and organization.The questionnaire results, on the other hand, reveal that the overall means of the usefulness of reading peers¿ essays was 4.35 and that of reading peers¿ written comments was 4.21, which were both above the average mean value. Therefore, it can be concluded that the students perceived both reading their classmates¿ compositions and reading their peers¿ written comments useful.