The Impact of Peer Feedback on Chinese EFL Junior High School Students’ Writing Performance

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Introduction
Students' English writing performance has been the focus of the Chinese EFL environment.The student's writing ability in EFL/ESL is an inherent process that cannot be ignored.EFL writing can promote the students' ability, cultivate their logical thinking and cognition, and improve their creativity and communication (Li, 2019;Liu, 2020).Additionally, EFL writing can improve students' ability to use English in words, grammar, structure, and other aspects they have learned (Yu, 2021).However, even though EFL writing has received attention from the Chinese government, there are still many problems in the practice of EFL writing.Teachers use delayed teacher feedback, teachers' comments are more general, and teachers introduce universal sentences to students, leading to solidified thinking and not allowing students to be creative in their writing (Zhang, 2021;Wang, 2021).Besides, the Chinese EFL students lack interest and confidence in writing.They pay more attention to writing scores, ignore the contents of feedback, only see the teachers' positive comments on their writing, and are seldom willing to correct their essays from the teacher's feedback (Wang, 2016;Xing, 2019).Some researchers believe that students' writing ability is the most challenging ability to cultivate (Wen, 2019).Meanwhile, others believe that students' motivation, confidence, and ability are the main problems in teaching English writing (Li, 2019;Hou, 2020).Improving students' writing ability and self-efficacy is a problem that many teachers need to reflect on.According to Chinese New English Curriculum Standards (2003 Edition), one of the purposes of English education is to cultivate junior high school students writing ability.Additionally, Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards (2011 Edition) proposes to optimize and advocate the diversification of evaluation methods, in which the evaluation should not only be done by teachers but can also be promoted among students.Although in recent years, the teaching and learning of English writing have attracted more attention in China, there are still many problems with junior high school students' English writing and feedback.Such as, teachers still use the traditional recitation methods to teach a common sentence, and teacher feedback is lacking (Zhang, 2021;Wang, 2021).
EFL teachers still use recitation to evaluate students' writing which is too simple, and students don't know how to use it (Lin, 2016).Additionally, Chinese EFL teachers always introduce students to common sentences, and almost all students use the same expression (Liu, 2021).Moreover, single teacher feedback is lacking, and the contents of teacher feedback are too formal and generalized (Ma, 2016;Li, 2020).Students also pay more attention to examination scores and ignore actual problems in writing, such as content, ideas, organization, coherence, and cohesion (Zeng, 2016;Xing, 2019).There are problems in using Chinglish, such as misusing words and grammar, and some issues in content, structure, etc. (Zhai, 2019;Liu, 2020).Students also tend to look at their writing scores and rarely consider how to write for the second time (Zeng, 2016).Additionally, most Chinese students depend only on teacher feedback to improve their writing ability (Yang, 2020;Yu, 2021).Moreover, the confidence and motivation of Chinese EFL students in writing are not high, and some students even appear to be afraid of writing (Guo, 2018;Xia, 2021).The Chinese EFL students also lack motivation and confidence in writing, and their writing ability has not improved (Zhao, 2019;Hou, 2020).
Improving the Chinese EFL students' writing performance has been a significant difficulty, especially determining what kind of writing feedback can improve Chinese EFL students' writing (Li, 2019;Han, 2020).There have been various methods to find effective feedback methods to improve the students' writing, such as self-feedback, peer feedback, and teacher feedback.The Chinese Nine-Year Compulsory Education Full Time Junior High School English Syllabus (2018 Edition) also pointed out that teachers should optimize writing feedback methods.Some scholars have focused on peer feedback on students' English writing (Rias et al., 2019;Yan, 2021).Most research on peer feedback in China or outside of China is concentrated in English as a second language (ESL) that were conducted in universities and senior high schools, and there are not a lot of studies in EFL junior high schools (Liu, 2020).Additionally, research focuses on the effectiveness of peer feedback, the comparative study of teacher and peer feedback, and students' attitudes towards peer feedback (Ding, 2021).However, there is little research on the effectiveness of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing performance, especially in terms of writing ability and self-efficacy.
To be fair, some studies explore the relationship between peer feedback and writing, and most studies show that peer feedback positively affects the student's writing ability (Pan, 2021).However, these studies focus on universities or senior high schools (Sirikarn, 2020;Liu, 2020), and there are very few junior high schools.In addition, the effectiveness of peer feedback is mainly focused on writing ability and rarely on self-efficacy (Meng, 2020).Moreover, some studies focus on the impact of peer feedback on Chinese EFL students' writing using single feedback (Gao, 2019).There are some studies focused on the comparison of teacher feedback and peer feedback.However, few studies use peer and teacher feedback to explore the effectiveness of peer feedback (Wang, 2021).
The application of peer feedback in Chinese EFL junior high school is very limited (Gao & Wang, 2021).Teachers are more concerned about teaching efficiency in writing classes and often ignore the students' self-efficacy (Chen & Wang, 2021).Additionally, the teachers often ask the students to recite the sample essays (Li, 2021).Moreover, English teacher in China teaches several classes, and they can't give teacher feedback in time (Yang & Liu, 2021).When they give feedback, this feedback and comments are very general to students' writing, making them unclear about their writing problems (Ma, 2016;Yu, 2017).Chinese EFL teachers also tend to introduce common sentences for students in writing, resulting in almost all students using the same expressions and depriving their writing interest, motivation, and confidence (Liu, 2021).
There is a lack of peer feedback on the research on two aspects of writing ability and self-efficacy for Chinese EFL junior high school students.Additionally, studies on peer and teacher feedback used to determine peer feedback's impact on Chinese EFL junior high school English teaching practice are very limited.Therefore, based on these practical problems and research gaps, this research explores the effects of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability and self-efficacy.A quasi-experimental study was done in a Chinese EFL public junior high school.There were two classes of 50 students in this study.One group was the control group (in which the students in this group received teacher feedback only).The other group is the experimental group (after getting feedback from the teacher, the students would also get peer feedback where students are required to comment, discuss, and revise the content, organization, and grammar based on the standards).
The objectives of this proposed study are: 1) To determine the effectiveness of peer feedback to improve Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability (i.e., content, organization, and grammar).
2) To discover the effectiveness of peer feedback to improve Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing self-efficacy (i.e., motivation and confidence).

EFL Writing in China
Writing is one of the four language skills, a written form to express learners' feelings or ideas, and it is a way for authors to communicate with readers.EFL writing refers to writing in English as a foreign language, using the content, grammar, organization, and other aspects of language to construct an article, which needs to be conceived, drafted, and revised (Brown, 2007) Although EFL writing has attracted attention in China, there are still some challenges for students.There are lots of problems in grammar, organization, structure, and content for Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing (Zhai, 2019;Hou, 2020;Yu, 2021).Moreover, the confidence and motivation of Chinese EFL junior high school students are not evident, and some students even appear to be afraid of writing (Guo, 2018).Therefore, enhancing the Chinese EFL students' writing ability and self-efficacy are the key points explored in this research.Some problems need to be solved in teaching writing in China.For example, Chinese students value a face-saving attitude in which they refrain from hurting or offending their colleagues when they are learning, so students may not make strict comments when evaluating their peers' writing (Ma, 2020).Students correcting their peers' writing strictly will hurt their pride and affect their relationships (Li, 2020).Teachers are the sole authority (as far as Chinese students go), and the students may think that their peers are insufficient to evaluate (Xing, 2019;Yang, 2020).

Peer Feedback on EFL/ESL Students' Writing
Peer feedback refers to the writing and evaluation activities in which students exchange drafts, read peers' drafts, and give suggestions for revisions to peers' essays (Farrah, 2012).It's also called peer evaluation, peer review, peer response, peer correction, peer editing, and student evaluation (Liu & Hansen, 2002).It is based on constructivism and the writing process approach.Peer feedback is essential in EFL/ESL writing as it can improve students' writing ability in content, structure, language, grammar, vocabulary, organization, accuracy, complexity, and so on (Nuwar, 2016;Feng, 2019;Zhai, 2019).Additionally, it can help students to enhance students motivation and confidence in self-efficacy and enrich their writing resources (Xia, 2014;Wang, 2018;Weda et al., 2018).
Several Chinese research that focuses on improving peer feedback on EFL students' writing ability found that peer feedback has a positive impact on EFL students' writing.Through three-month action research on a class of the first grade, 30 boys and 22 girls, it is concluded the students' writing scores have been promoted (Pan, 2021).
Research conducted 10-week peer feedback with 42 ninth-grade students in junior high school showed that peer feedback has a positive impact on writing ability, and students believed that the content, organization, and language could be enriched through peer feedback, accounting for 61.9%, 57.1%, and 61.9%, respectively (Yu, 2021).The 116 non-English major university students were selected to conduct 14-week peer feedback.It showed that most students think peer feedback can stimulate their enthusiasm and interest in writing and enhance their independent learning ability and critical thinking (Hou, 2020).Therefore, it can be concluded that peer feedback has a positive impact on students' writing ability.
According to previous research findings, some studies showed that teacher feedback is more effective than peer feedback, while others believe peer feedback is more effective than teacher feedback.Meanwhile, some scholars believe that teacher and peer feedback should be combined.A comparative study of peer feedback and teacher feedback on 33 English majors found that 97% of them think that teacher feedback is effective, but only 39% of students believe that peer feedback is effective (Qi, 2004).However, Zhao (2010) conducted a six-week study on Chinese college students and found that 58% of students can accept teacher feedback, but students have adopted 83% of peer feedback.Meanwhile, Wang (2019) combined peer and teacher feedback for senior high school students and found that this method is positive.Therefore, it can be considered that teacher feedback and peer feedback have their advantages and disadvantages.The combination of them is more effective in improving students' writing ability.
The review of past studies found that Chinese EFL students with positive attitudes toward peer feedback are significantly higher than those with negative attitudes.A 10-week study of 102 students in the second grade of senior high school found that most students (93.8%) have a positive attitude toward peer feedback in writing (Liu, 2020).Ding (2021) conducted a 12-week experimental study on 68 students in the second grade of senior high school and found that most of the students (92.42%) have a positive attitude towards peer feedback, and some of the students (63.30%) believe that peer feedback is effective.However, some studies showed that students have a negative attitude toward peer feedback.A comparative study of Chinese sophomore students using questionnaire surveys found that the students have the lowest satisfaction with peer feedback (Zhou, 2013).
Zhang ( 2016) used a survey questionnaire, experiment, interview, and observation methods conducted on 92 junior high school students.It found that some students have a negative attitude toward peer feedback.Therefore, it can be seen that most students have a positive attitude toward peer feedback, but some students have a negative attitude toward peer feedback.
There is also some research on peer feedback and self-efficacy, which mainly focus on the impact of peer feedback on students' writing self-efficacy, the effect of peer feedback on students' self-efficacy with different writing levels, and the impact of peer feedback on students' writing motivation.Meng (2020) researched 96 senior high school students using the survey questionnaire and interview, which showed that peer feedback significantly enhances the students' writing self-efficacy.Additionally, peer feedback has a different influence on students' self-efficacy with varying levels of writing.Xiao (2021) studied 98 senior high school students to explore the effects of peer feedback on students' self-efficacy with different writing levels, and it showed that peer feedback improves the writing self-efficacy of intermediate and low-level students much higher than that of high-level students, and the improvement of writing self-efficacy for low-level students is the greatest.Finally, there is also the impact of peer feedback on students' writing motivation in self-efficacy.Li (2016) found that peer feedback significantly improves students' motivation in self-efficacy.So, it can be concluded that peer feedback has a positive impact on improving the students' writing self-efficacy.Therefore, based on this review of past studies and the gaps within these past studies, this research is set to explore the effects of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability and self-efficacy.

Research Methodology
This research used a quantitative research design to explore the effectiveness of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability and self-efficacy.Participants in this study are 100 ninth-grade students in two classes in a Chinese public junior high school.The sampling procedure for selecting participants in this study is convenience sampling by way of intact classes.The first class (n=50) is the experimental class that used peer feedback and teacher feedback, while the second class (n=50) is the control group that only used teacher feedback.Students are between 13-16 years old.In answering the question on the effectiveness of peer feedback on students' writing ability, the quasi-experimental method was used to determine students' content, grammar, and organization changes after the 8-week experiment.When answering peer feedback on students' self-efficacy in motivation and confidence, this study adopted the survey questionnaires.It is determined that the changes in students' self-efficacy after the peer feedback include motivation and confidence.
The pre-test is conducted on two classes before the experiment to test whether the writing ability of the two classes is similar.After the 8-week experiment, a post-test is used to test whether the writing ability of the two classes is affected by the different feedback methods.The two tests are selected from the 2020 and 2021 senior high school entrance examinations (Appendix A & Appendix B).The students are required to complete each test in 20 minutes, and two experienced teachers score their scores with more than ten years who are also teaching ninth-grade students in this school to evaluate the student's writing grammar, organization, and content (Appendix C).After the 8-week experiment, 100 students in the experimental class and control class are given two different questionnaires to investigate whether peer feedback is more effective than single teacher feedback for Chinese EFL junior high school students' self-efficacy in confidence and motivation, and they can complete the questionnaire within 5 minutes (Appendix D & Appendix E).Each questionnaire included 20 questions, 4 of which were about the student's attitudes towards different feedback, and 16 were on motivation and confidence in self-efficacy.The questionnaires used the Likert five-point scale (A=Completely Disagree; B=Disagree; C=Neutral; D=Agree; E=Strongly Agree).
This study used SPSS 23 to analyze the data.Firstly, to test whether there were significant differences between the experimental and control students' writing ability before the experiment, the researcher used descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test.After the 8-week experiment, the researcher also used the descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-test to examine whether there were significant differences in writing ability between the two classes under the different feedback.Additionally, to check the two-tailed significance value, the researcher used the paired samples t-test to test the pre-and post-experimental students' changes in writing ability (i.e., content, organization, grammar).The researcher also used the paired samples t-test to test the preand post-experimental control students' changes in writing ability (i.e., content, organization, grammar).Moreover, in the survey questionnaires, the mean values of SPSS descriptive statistics were mainly used to analyze the influence of peer feedback or teacher feedback on the student's writing motivation and confidence in self-efficacy.

Results and Findings
The researchers conducted the 8-week writing teaching experiment using single teacher feedback in the control class (CC) and peer feedback and teacher feedback in the experimental class (EC).The data from pre-test, post-test, and survey questionnaires will be analyzed and discussed to test further the effectiveness of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing performance in writing ability and self-efficacy.

RQ1: What is the impact of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability (i.e., content, organization, and grammar)?
To further test and verify the effectiveness of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability (i.e., grammar, structure, content), EC and CC students would be analyzed in pre-test and post-test.Table 4 is the independent sample t-test to test whether there are significant differences in writing content, organization, and grammar between experimental class (EC-teacher and peer feedback) and control class (CC-teacher feedback) students in pre-test and post-test.There is no significant difference between EC and CC students in content, organization, and grammar in the pre-test.The MDs of content, organization, and grammar are 0.06, 0.06, and 0.04, respectively.P is 0.753, 0.717, and 0.815, which are higher than 0.05, so the differences are insignificant.However, there are significant differences in EC and CC students' writing content and organization in post-test.The MD of content and organization are 0.64 and 0.38, respectively.P are 0.000 and 0.010<0.05,which indicates that EC and CC students have significant content and organization in post-test.But there is no significant difference between EC and CC students' grammar in post-test.The MD of grammar is only 0.04.P is 0.785>0.05,so the difference is not significant.The paired sample t-test is used (see Table 5) to discover the changes for experimental class (EC-teacher and peer feedback) and control class (CC-teacher feedback) students' scores in content, organization, and grammar by different feedback in pre-test and post-test.Firstly, there are positive improvements for EC students to improve their writing content, organization, and grammar after peer feedback.The MD of content, organization, and grammar are 0.7, 0.5, and 0.3, respectively.Three P values are the same as 0.000<0.05,so there is positive facilitation for EC students' writing content, organization, and grammar after the peer feedback.Additionally, the CC students' writing content, organization, and grammar have improved after single teacher feedback, but the improvements are minor.The MD of content, organization, and grammar are only 0.12, 0.06, and 0.22, respectively.P is 0.013, 0.083, 0.001<0.05,which indicates a significant difference in sub-items.So, students who received peer feedback improved significantly in sub-items than students who accepted only teacher feedback Therefore, based on the above, some conclusions can be drawn.The student's writing ability is effectively improved after peer feedback, which is higher than those under teacher feedback.The students under teacher feedback improved only 0.4, while the students under peer feedback promoted 1.5.Additionally, the students promote more sub-items (i.e., content, organization, and grammar) after the peer feedback.The content, organization, and grammar improvements are 0.7, 0.5, and 0.3, respectively.However, the students' improvements are small in sub-items under single teacher feedback.The grammar, content, and organization improvements are 0.22, 0.12, and 0.06, respectively.So, it can be concluded that peer feedback has a more significant positive effect on improving student's writing ability in terms of content, organization, and grammar.It is generally better than single teacher feedback.

RQ2: What is the impact of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing self-efficacy (i.e., motivation and confidence)?
The survey questionnaire was used to explore the impact of peer feedback on junior high school students writing self-efficacy, particularly in motivation and confidence after 8-week treatment.Each questionnaire had 20 questions and was in the form of a Likert scale (A=Completely Disagree; B=Disagree; C=Neutral; D=Agree; E=Strongly Agree).The recovery rate and the effective rate were both 100%.The questionnaires were divided into the following aspects: Junior high school students' attitudes toward peer or teacher feedback.Junior high school students' attitudes towards peer feedback or teacher feedback on motivation or confidence in self-efficacy.Table 6 is the first dimension of the questionnaire to explore the experimental class (EC-teacher and peer feedback) and control class (CC-teacher feedback) students' attitudes toward peer or teacher feedback.EC students' have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback than CC students toward teacher feedback.EC students like peer feedback much more than CC students like teacher feedback.80%, 82%, 80%, and 82% of EC students agree or strongly agree that they like peer feedback, peer feedback is not uncomfortable, and peer feedback can improve their motivation.And peer feedback can enhance their confidence, respectively.While 62%, 58%, 60%, and 62% of CC students agree or strongly agree that they like teacher feedback, teacher feedback is not uncomfortable, teacher feedback can improve their motivation, and teacher feedback can improve confidence, respectively.About four-fifths of EC students have a positive attitude toward peer feedback, one-tenth have a negative attitude, and one-tenth have neutral perceptions.In contrast, the CC students toward teacher feedback are three-fifths, one-fifths, and one-fifths, respectively.Therefore, it can be concluded that EC students have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback than CC students toward teacher feedback after 8-week.Table 7 presents the second dimension of the questionnaire to discover the students' attitudes toward peer feedback or teacher feedback on self-efficacy in motivation.EC students' have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback on motivation than CC students' towards teacher feedback.Firstly, EC students' attitudes toward peer feedback that improved their motivation to find writing problems and problems in grammar, organization, and content, were more positive than CC students' attitudes toward teacher feedback.78%, 76%, 76%, and 80% of EC students agree or strongly agree that peer feedback improves their motivation to find writing problems and problems in grammar, organization, and content, while 58%, 60%, 54%, and 58% of CC students agree with teacher feedback.Furthermore, EC students have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback in improving motivation to read, discuss and consider suggestions than CC students towards teacher feedback.82%, 80%, 78%, and 76% of EC students agree or strongly agree that peer feedback can improve their motivation to let peers read their work, to read peers' work, to discuss peers' work with group members, and to consider peers' suggestions, respectively.While students in CC toward teacher feedback are 48%, 50%, 52%, and 54%, respectively.Therefore, more than three-fourths of EC students have a significantly positive attitude toward peer feedback and its impact on writing self-efficacy in motivation, which is higher than half of the CC students towards teacher feedback.Teacher feedback can improve my confidence in the content of my writing Table 8 presents the third dimension of the questionnaire to discover the students' attitudes toward peer feedback or teacher feedback on self-efficacy in confidence.EC students' have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback on confidence than CC students' towards teacher feedback.Firstly, 76%, 74%, 82%, 80%, and 78% of EC students agree or strongly agree that peers' feedback stimulates and consolidates knowledge, turns disadvantages into their writing advantages, enhances their writing interest and enthusiasm, provides more writing inspiration and expression, and reduce writing anxiety, respectively.While CC students toward teacher feedback, they are 56%, 60%, 52%, 62%, and 56%, respectively.Finally, EC students are much more confident that peer feedback can improve their writing organization, grammar, and content than CC students toward teacher feedback.EC students agree or strongly agree that peer feedback can strengthen their confidence in the organization, grammar, and content in writing by 76%, 70%, and 80%, respectively.While CC students toward teacher feedback are 60%, 62%, and 56%, respectively.It can be seen that the seven-tenths or more of EC students' attitudes toward peer feedback in confidence are much higher than that of more than half of CC students' attitudes toward teacher feedback.
Therefore, according to the comparative analysis of the questionnaire, it can be seen that the students have positive attitudes toward peer feedback and teacher feedback.But the students' attitudes toward peer feedback, motivation, and confidence are generally higher than toward teacher feedback.Firstly, students' attitude towards peer feedback is usually higher than that of students toward teacher feedback.More than a fourth-fifths of students agree or strongly agree with peer feedback, while about three-fifths of students agree with teacher feedback.Additionally, the students' attitudes toward peer feedback on self-efficacy in motivation are more favorable than the attitudes toward teacher feedback.More than three-fourths of students agree or strongly agree with the effect of peer feedback on self-efficacy in motivation, while half or more students agree with the impact of teacher feedback on motivation.Finally, the students' attitudes toward peer feedback on their self-efficacy in confidence are more positive than the attitudes toward teacher feedback on confidence.More than seven-tenths of students agree or strongly agree with the influence of peer feedback on their self-efficacy in confidence, while more than half of students agree with the impact of teacher feedback on confidence.In summary, it can be considered that peer feedback is more impactful for EFL/ESL students to improve their writing self-efficacy in, motivation, and confidence.

RQ1: What is the impact of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing ability (i.e., content, organization, and grammar)?
The following findings can be drawn and discussed after the 8-week experiment.Firstly, the student's writing ability under peer feedback improved more significantly than those under single teacher feedback after the 8-week.This finding further verified the results of Xie (2019).The mean difference of students under peer feedback was 1.94, P=0.044<0.05,which proved that the students had improved significantly after peer feedback.Secondly, the students in the two classes had significant differences in content and organization, but the difference in grammar was not significant after the 8-week experiment.This finding is consistent with Yu (2021), which found that peer feedback has a positive effect on improving students' writing content and organization.Lin (2016) found that after using peer feedback and teacher feedback in two classes, the students' grammar under peer feedback was slightly higher than those under teacher feedback.Thirdly, the students had different improvements in writing content, organization, and grammar after peer feedback.The students' writing in content, organization, and grammar improved significantly.The results are consistent with Wang (2021), who conducted an experiment on 92 senior high school students and found significant differences in students' writing content, organization, and grammar under peer feedback.The growth value is 0.3478 and 0.3696, 0.3246.lastly, the students under teacher feedback improved the writing content, organization, and grammar after the experiment, but not much.The results are consistent with Yang (2020), who found that the students had a certain improvement in content and grammar under teacher feedback, but not much.This result verified the research of Cao (2019) after conducting a study on 100 junior high school students and finding no significant difference in the organization.
Constructivism theory, process writing approach, and self-efficacy theory provide the theoretical basis for improving Chinese EFL junior high school students writing ability.Firstly, constructivism emphasizes the student-centered teaching philosophy.Students are the subjects of peer feedback.They actively construct and seek out various problems in themselves.Their peers can apply their knowledge in different contexts, help peers discover the problems in content, organization, and grammar, and then promote their language acquisition.Moreover, the process writing approach is a dynamic and cyclic process.It is student-centered, which emphasizes that writing is a complex process of discovering, analyzing, and solving problems and stimulates students' writing creativity.Students' writing ability will develop when they focus on the meaningful input and output process.Finally, self-efficacy theory focuses on their ability to perform tasks individually and successfully.
Students can judge the strengths and weaknesses of themselves and their peers in the writing process.These advantages can be applied to their following writing process, and the shortcomings can be avoided.Once the writing is successful, it will significantly stimulate students' self-efficacy in writing.

RQ2: What is the impact of peer feedback on Chinese EFL junior high school students' writing self-efficacy (i.e., motivation and confidence)?
The following findings can be drawn and discussed from the questionnaires.Firstly, most of the students (>80%) under teacher feedback had positive attitudes toward peer feedback and its impact on motivation and confidence, which was higher than the students' attitudes toward teacher feedback (>60%).This finding is consistent with Liu's (2017) findings, which were 81.7% and 61.7%, respectively.Zhang (2021) showed that more than 79% of students agree that peer feedback can improve their writing motivation, and Ma (2018) showed that up to 82.1% agree that peer feedback can improve their writing confidence.Secondly, the majority of students (>75%) under peer feedback had positive attitudes toward the impact of peer feedback on motivation, which was higher than the students' attitudes toward teacher feedback on motivation (>50%).The findings confirmed Lin (2016), which showed that 74%, 78%, and 86% of students believed that peer feedback could improve their motivation in grammar, organization, and content, respectively.The students have more positive attitudes toward peer feedback in improving their motivation to read, discuss and consider suggestions.The finding is also similar to Gao's (2019) study found that 75% of students would consider peer suggestions.Thirdly, the majority of students (>70%) under peer feedback had positive attitudes toward the impact of peer feedback on confidence, which was higher than the students' attitudes toward teacher feedback on confidence (>50%).Students agree that peer feedback stimulates and consolidates knowledge and turns it into their writing strengths, consistent with Guo's (2017), 80.8% and 78.8%, respectively.Peer feedback enhances writing interest and enthusiasm, provides writing inspiration and expression, and reduces writing anxiety, similar to Xie (2019), showing 70%, 83%, and 79%, respectively.Students are more confident that peer feedback improves their writing organization, grammar, and content than teacher feedback, which confirms the findings of Zhai (2019), showing 80%, 90%, and 80%, respectively.
It can be seen that peer feedback has a positive impact on improving the confidence and motivation of junior high school students writing self-efficacy.Constructivism theory, process writing approach, and self-efficacy theory provide the theoretical basis for improving junior high school students' writing motivation and confidence under peer feedback.Firstly, constructivism requires students to discover actively, understand, construct and use the knowledge on their initiative (Kurteš & Kopytowska, 2014).Students reconstruct their cognitive systems based on their existing knowledge and provide feedback on their peers' writing, which enables them to master the knowledge and mobilizes their motivation and confidence.Moreover, the process writing approach emphasizes that each stage of writing should be gradual and plays a vital role in improving students' writing motivation and confidence.Under the process writing approach, students improve their cognitive, thinking, and writing skills through revisions and discussions, which enhances students' motivation and confidence in writing.Finally, self-efficacy is the basis of human motivation, and people can feel the happiness which can give people confidence and motivation in their ability to do certain things (Bandura, 1986).Peer feedback can stimulate the students' learning enthusiasm, participation, and self-efficacy in writing.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it was found that both peer and teacher feedback can improve the student's writing ability, but peer feedback has more positive effects on students' writing ability.After eight weeks of teaching practice, the two class students' writing abilities improved through different feedback.However, for the students that receive peer feedback, their writing ability improved by 1.5, while the improvement of students under teacher feedback is only 0.4.Besides, the SD of students by peer feedback became smaller than that of teacher feedback.So, this finding confirms that the effectiveness of peer feedback on students' writing ability is far greater than teacher feedback on students.This further affirms the effectiveness of peer feedback on students' writing ability.It was also found that peer feedback is more effective than single teacher feedback in improving student's writing ability in sub-items.After the 8-week experiment, the students under only teacher feedback improved their grammar by 0.22, followed by the content by 0.12, and last organization by 0.06.However, the students under peer feedback improved by 0.7 in content, followed by the organization by 0.5, and the grammar by 0.3.It confirms that the improvement of the student's writing by peer feedback is much more positive than that of single teacher feedback on students.The slightest improvement by peer feedback is grammar, while the most significant improvement by teacher feedback is grammar.The two methods are complementary to a certain extent.Teachers should recognize the importance of two methods and give full play to their strengths to achieve the best teaching effect.Thirdly, the students' attitudes toward peer feedback or teacher feedback are positive in general, but the students' attitudes toward peer feedback, motivation, and confidence are higher than the students' attitudes toward teacher feedback.According to the questionnaires, more than four-fifths of students agree or strongly agree with peer feedback and its role, while the students agree with the teacher feedback, which is three-fifths.About three-fourths of students agree or strongly agree with the effect of peer feedback on self-efficacy in motivation, while more than half of students agree on the impact of teacher feedback on self-efficacy in motivation.About seven-tenths of students agree or strongly agree with the effectiveness of peer feedback on self-efficacy in confidence, while half of the students agree with the effectiveness of teacher feedback on self-efficacy in confidence.Therefore, it can be inferred that peer feedback is more conducive to improving students' self-efficacy in, motivation, and confidence than single teacher feedback.
In summary, it can be concluded that both peer feedback and teacher feedback have particular effectiveness for students' writing performance in ability and self-efficacy, but peer feedback has a more significant positive impact on students' writing ability in sub-items than single teacher feedback, which further proves that the effectiveness of peer feedback on student writing ability.In addition, it can be considered that the majority of students have a more positive attitude toward the effectiveness of peer feedback on self-efficacy in motivation and confidence, and are generally much higher than students' attitudes toward teacher feedback, which further illustrates the effectiveness of peer feedback on students' self-efficacy in motivation and confidence.Therefore, peer feedback positively affects students' writing performance in writing ability and self-efficacy.

Implications
Regarding the study findings, there are some implications for teacher's instruction, particularly in using both teacher and peer feedback in teaching EFL writing.Teachers should adequately play their role of organizer, helper, observer, and person to give timely feedback to students, create a positive classroom atmosphere, optimize the writing feedback, and stimulate students' motivation and confidence.Additionally, the teacher should develop detailed correction processes and feedback criteria, monitor students' grading, practice the evaluation training process, and communicate equally with students.Finally, the teacher should strive to improve their teaching ability and literacy, update their teaching concepts, and solve problems in students' learning process.
This study impacts the Chinese junior high school English curriculum and related policies.This research would help to promote school curriculum reform, provide guidance for school writing, push schools to adjust different writing methods, and reflect on the problems existing in students' writing.Moreover, it would enhance the reform of English writing policies, help fill the previous policy gap, provide more innovative writing methods and policies, and push the English policies in the EFL/ESL classroom.Lastly, it would help relevant national departments to reflect and summarize policies and promote all parties to put forward optimal suggestions for curriculum reform.
There are also some implications for future research.Firstly, future researchers doing experimental or quasi-experimental studies should let students understand the knowledge they output in writing through feedback and create a relaxed environment.The teacher should guide students to study acting to stimulate their enthusiasm and interest and improve their writing ability.Additionally, the researcher should deepen the research process and encourage students to engage in oral discussions.Moreover, the sample size and scope of other studies can be increased.More time could be expanded to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of peer feedback on writing performance.

Recommendations
Several recommendations can be made as a consequence of this study.Firstly, the sample size and scope in future research can be expanded to make the sample and scope more representative of the study's district.
Additionally, future research should appropriately extend the study period.Peer feedback is a time-consuming and multi-step feedback method, and it has a practical effect on junior high school English writing in a short period in this study.Whether it has the same impact on the long-term period needs to be investigated for a more extended period in future research.Moreover, the applicability of the experiment remains to be further investigated.This study only applies to schools with similar levels of students to this school, and whether it applies to schools at other levels and other schools remains to be further studied in future research.Furthermore, more effective research tools need to be improved in future research.This study uses the methods of pre-test, post-test, and questionnaire for reference from previous studies.It makes appropriate modifications according to the actual situation, whether there are more effective methods need to be considered in future research.Lastly, the student's writing performance may also be affected by other factors, which is a point that needs to be paid great attention to in future research.For example, students' thinking style, learning style, students' favorable impression of teachers, etc., will interfere with the final experimental results.
. EFL writing is critical and necessary in Chinese junior high schools and complies with relevant national regulations.The New English Curriculum Standards (2003 Edition) stipulates that one goal of English is cultivating students' writing ability.The Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards (2011 Edition) also provides that junior high school students should meet the writing requirements and proposes to optimize and advocate the diversification of evaluation methods.

Table 1 .
Descriptive Statistics of EC and CC Students' Scores in Pre-and Post-test Note.N=Number, SD=Standard Deviation.Table1shows the descriptive statistics of experimental class (EC-teacher and peer feedback) and control class (CC-teacher feedback) students' writing scores in pre-test and post-test.Firstly, it can be seen that there is no difference between the EC and CC pre-test in number, max, min, mean, and SD are very close.So, it can be proven that the students had almost the same writing ability before the experiment.However, peer feedback improved EC students' writing ability more than those in CC under single teacher feedback.The mean of EC is 10.98, which increases by 1.5, while CC is 9.92, which improves by only 0.4 in the post-test.The SD of EC is smaller than CC.Therefore, it can be inferred that the student's writing ability has improved after 8-week of teacher and peer feedback which is more favorable than CC students using only teacher feedback.Table2.Paired Sample T-test of EC and CC Students' Scores in Pre-and Post-test in pre-test and post-test, but EC students make more progress.So, it can be concluded that teacher and peer feedback has a more significant positive impact on the students' writing ability than only teacher feedback.

Table 3 .
Independent Sample T-test of EC and CC Students' Scores in Pre-and Post-test Note.CI=Confidence; Sig.= Significant at the 0.05 level (P<0.05).Table3is the independent sample t-test performed in the experimental class (EC-teacher and peer feedback) and control class (CC-teacher feedback) in pre-test and post-test to check whether EC and CC are significantly different after the experiment.There is no significant difference between EC and CC students' writing ability in the pre-test.P is 0.930>0.05,mean difference is 0.04.However, there is a significant difference between EC and CC students' writing ability in post-test.The results show that F is 0.666, so the variances are homogeneous.P is 0.007<0.05,indicating a significant difference between EC and CC students' writing ability in post-test.Moreover, the mean difference is 1.06 in the post-test, which is higher than 0.04 in the pre-test.So, it can be seen that the students writing ability to the teacher and peer feedback are more positive than the only teacher feedback.

Table 4 .
Independent Sample T-test of EC and CC Students' Pre-and Post-test Scores in Each Sub-item Note.CI=Confidence; SD=Standard Deviation, MD=Mean Difference, Sig.=Significant at the 0.05 level (P<0.05).

Table 5 .
Paired Sample T-test of EC and CC Students' Pre-and Post-test in Each Sub-item Note.CI=Confidence; SD=Standard Deviation, MD=Mean Difference, Sig.=Significant at the 0.05 level (P<0.05).

Table 6 .
EC and CC Students' Attitude Towards Peer Feedback or Teacher Feedback

Table 7 .
EC and CC Students' Attitudes Towards Peer Feedback or Teacher Feedback on Motivation in

Table 8 .
EC and CC Students' Attitudes Towards Peer Feedback or Teacher Feedback on Confidence in Self-efficacy