Effects of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Peer Review in an EFL Writing Course

This study aims to investigate the effects of the two-step blended computer mediated communication (CMC) peer review process (Word commenting followed by Zoom discussion) in an English writing course for 29 Chinese EFL learners, and their perceptions of this mode. Compared with previous studies, the findings of this study are encouraging: 1) the proportions of revision-oriented comments students gave reached at a high level of above 85% of the total comments; 2) students gave more local comments, but the ratio of revision-oriented comments in global areas to revision-oriented comments in local areas was more balanced (approximately 40% vs 60%); 3) the adoption rates of revision-oriented comments in text revision were also at a high level (63%−73%). What’s more, most students held positive attitudes toward this mode, perceiving it useful in their text revision and development of writing ability. 65% of them expressed their willingness to attend this mode of review activities in the future. This study reveals that the two-step CMC peer review process with Word commenting followed by discussion via online video conferencing system can be used as a useful tool in EFL writing class. This study contributes to the current research on CMC peer review since most previous studies investigated effects of peer review using text-based CMC tools and little research has been done on speech-based tools.


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The next 1 three rheto cycle of w week 1: in students w Week 2: i (adapted f mechanics based on a modeled h each step their peer, When doing the counting, each insertion of comment was carefully examined. If it dealt with one problem, it was counted as one comment. If an insertion dealt with more than one problem, then it was counted as more than one comment. In some cases, the reviewer discussed just one problem, but he/she gave comments of different nature. For example, he/she gave a praise first and then pointed out the problem and/or gave a suggestion. In this case, the praise was counted as one comment independently because it is non-revision-oriented in nature and identification of problem (clarification or critical evaluation) and/or suggestion was counted as another comment because both belong to revision-oriented criteria. Below are some examples.
Example l: Writer's text: While in e-learning, there is less interaction, and of course, indirect interaction.
Reviewer's comment: What is "indirect interaction"? Do you mean unresponsive interaction, or interaction without physical touch? Can you give some details?
This insertion was counted as one comment in the area of content.
Example 2: Writer's text: Thirdly, the overall job quality will be enhanced. People no longer need to do some boring and repetitive work.
Reviewer's comment: It is a little bit absolute. Try to add some limit words like "maybe" or "perhaps". Also, an explanation why this will happen is necessary, I think.
This insertion was counted as two comments as it dealt with two problems: the first concerning language use and the second concerning content. This insertion was counted as two comments: the first half is a praise and the second half is a suggestion.

Total Number of Comments
As shown in Table 2, the total number of comments made in three rounds of peer review was decreasing even though the total words of students' first drafts in three assignments did not vary much. In the first round, students made 429 comments in total. In the second round, this total number decreased to 418. Considering that the total words of students' first drafts in the second assignment were 712 words less than those in first assignment, this decrease is reasonable. The most remarkable change, however, happened in the third round where this total number decreased dramatically to only 323, even though the total words of first drafts in the third assignment were nearly the same with those in the first assignment.  The possible explanation for this dramatic decrease may be students' tiredness near the end of the semester when the last round of peer review was conducted. In the first two rounds, students felt fresh about the new mode and showed high level of engagement. As time went by, however, their enthusiasm decreased because of the heavy workload. Last semester, they did peer reviews at paragraph level, so they just needed to comment on a 150-word paragraph each time. But they needed to review an essay of 500 words in each round in this semester. This was a big increase in workload. What's more, as all courses were carried out online and all homework assignments had to be done electronically, students had to sit in front of computers for a long time. In their third reflective journal, some students expressed both physical and mental tiredness. For instance, "After doing two peer reviews, I realized the workload was quite big and I felt tired. Both of us lost interests and patience. We gave less comments and spent less time on the task. I just wanted to finish it quickly as I had a lot of deadlines and exams for other courses."

Number of Revision-Oriented Comments
Table 2 also shows that in all three rounds, the majority (above 85%) of the comments made by student reviewers were revision-oriented in nature. In the previous studies, Liu and Sadler's (2003) reported a higher proportion of 92%, while both Ho (2015) as well as Liou and Peng (2009) reported a lower proportion of 60−70% and 68.7% respectively. The proportion of this study is still relatively high, which indicates that students were efficient in commenting part.
Two reasons may explain this. Firstly, the students had done peer reviews last semester and thus they knew how to give clear and helpful comments. Second, the students followed peer review form strictly. The form used in this semester was very similar to those they used in the last semester, which underwent several revisions based on their opinions. Most students considered it as a helpful guidance in review activities. Table 3 shows that in all three rounds students gave more local revision-oriented comments than global revision-oriented comments. The revision-oriented comments in global areas (content and organization) accounted for approximately 40% of the total revision-orientated comments (with a slightly lower percentage of 37% in the second round), while the revision-oriented comments in local areas (vocabulary, language use and mechanics) accounted for approximately 60%.

Number and Percentage of Revision-Oriented Comments by Area
The results of previous studies are not consistent. In Ho's (2015) study, students made significantly more global revision-oriented comments than local ones in CMC peer reviews. But in Liu and Sadler's (2003) study, students made much more local revision-oriented comments than global ones (222 vs 69) in CMC peer reviews and the proportion of local revision-oriented comments reached as high as 76%. The results of this study are similar with Liu and Sadler's but the ratio of global revision-oriented comments to local ones is more balanced. I agree with Liu and Sadler's explanation that Word commenting features help students to identify local errors, such as spelling and grammar errors. However, as the focus of my classroom teaching was development of effective argument, students also paid quite a lot of attention on content (the number of comments in content occupied the second biggest share of the total). Thus, the distribution of global revision-oriented comments and local ones is more balanced.  Table 3 also shows the distribution of revision-oriented comments in specific areas. Student reviewers gave most revision-oriented comments in the area of vocabulary with proportions ranging from 32%−37%. The second biggest share was in the area of content (28%−32%). Then, those comments in language use and in organization came next, with proportions ranging from 18%−27% and 8%−10% respectively. Students gave least revision-oriented comments in mechanics.
These proportions did vary slightly in three rounds, which may indicate students' slight change in focus in review activities. These changes might be related to the writing assignment or teacher's focus in teaching. For instance, the first assignment was to write a comparison or contrast essay. One of the teaching focuses for this writing cycle was the comparison structure. As a result, students paid more attention in structure and organization in writing and in the later peer review activities. Thus, it is not surprising to see the proportion of revision-oriented comments in organization is the highest (10%) among three rounds. Apart from this, students gave much more revision-oriented comments in the area of language use in the second round than in the first round (98 vs 68). This might be the result of the teacher's added language training session in the second writing cycle. When I read students' first assignments, I found that many sentences were very sweeping (e.g., E-learning has no limits of space and time) and students did not realize this problem, so I added a training on how to qualify a statement to make it not sweeping. Students paid special attention on this problem in subsequent peer review. One student wrote in her reflective journal, "in recent class, the teacher put a lot of emphasis on avoiding sweeping statement. So, when I read my partner's essay, I also pay more attention in this aspect." Therefore, the teacher's focus in class did affect students' focus in review activities.

Overall Adoption Rate
As shown in Table 4, the overall adoption rates of revision-oriented comments in three rounds range from 63%−73%. These rates are encouraging compared with those reported in previous studies. The overall adoption rates in Ho's (2015) study were 69% and 58% in two CMC peer reviews with Word and OnlineMeeting. Liou and Peng (2009) reported a 47.7% adoption rate in their weblog-based peer review study. Liu and Sadler (2003) reported the lowest adoption rate of only 27% in peer reviews using Word and MOO. Ho (2015) explained that the communication tools might be the reason leading to the difference in adoption rate. Ho (2015) contended that weblog lacked immediacy and timely response and MOO was less convenient than OnlineMeeting in communication in that it could not enable students to discuss problems while reading drafts on screen simultaneously as OnlineMeeting could. I agree with Ho's idea that communication tool will affect adoption. In their studies, the tools are text-based and students communicated by typing on screen, which is somehow time-and energy-consuming. But communication via Zoom is speech-based. Students can talk with faces shown while sharing documents on screen simultaneously. In their reflective journals, most students wrote that they felt no difference between Zoom discussion and the classroom discussion except some network problems. The smooth discussion via Zoom could helped students to clarify their doubts and reinforce their comments made in Word commenting part. This probably accounts for the higher adoption rate in this study. comments than global revision-oriented comments. In the first and third round, the adoption rates of local revision-oriented comments were nearly 20% higher than that of global ones (80% vs 62% and 71% vs 51%). However, the results of previous studies were just opposite. In Ho's (2015) study, students adopted less local revision-oriented comments than global ones (60% vs 75% and 56% vs 59% in two CMC peer reviews). In Liu and Sadler's (2003) study, although students gave much more local revision-oriented comments than global ones, the adoption rate of local revision-oriented comments was still much lower than that of global ones (22% vs 43%). The high adoption rate of local revision-oriented comments in this study may indicate students' strong confidence in their peers' English proficiency. The students in this study major in International Business. When they were admitted into this programme, their English proficiency was an important criterion for consideration. Their average score of English in College Entrance Examination was 134 (the total was 150), approximately equivalent to IELTS 7.5. In questionnaire, 100% of students showed their trust in peers.

Students' Perception of the Two-Step CMC Peer Review Process and Their Preference of Different Modes
29 students finished the questionnaire survey at the end of the semester. The first seven questions in the survey were asking students about their feelings and opinion concerning the two-step CMC peer review (Word commenting followed by peer discussion via Zoom). Also, since they had done traditional two-step peer review (paper-based commenting followed by face-to-face classroom discussion) last semester, they were also asked about their preferences. Table 5 shows the results. With respect to the first step of the peer review process, most students held positive attitude (both "agree" and "strongly agree"). 86% of students enjoyed the electronic commenting mode and agreed or strongly agree (65%) that the Word commenting features made it easy for them to comment on peers' writing. When comparing the traditional commenting mode and the Word commenting mode, 79% said they preferred Word commenting.
In their reflective journals, students also expressed their recognition of the advantages of Word commenting, such as its convenience, clarity, neatness and the sense of professionalism. Specific views included: A few students expressed the disadvantages of electronic commenting, mainly being time-and energy-consuming: • "Commenting on computer is more difficult, because writing on paper is easier than typing. Also, I am not so familiar with Word's function. It took a longer time and more energy to use computer than use paper." With respect to the second step, 76% of students enjoyed peer interaction via Zoom and agreed that Zoom made it easy for them to discuss their writing while 10% showed disagreement. But when comparing the traditional face-to-face discussion and the online discussion, only 55% said they preferred Zoom discussion; while 21% said they did not prefer this new mode and 24% remained undecided.
In their journals, students pointed out the advantages of Zoom discussion, such as its screen sharing function, its separate, private breakout rooms and the immediate real-time interaction. Specific positive views included: • "It was easy to do discussion via Zoom because we could share screen and chat freely. This interaction promoted my understanding of my partner's comments." • "I felt great. I like the atmosphere of learning together and have "debate" on specific questions. we can have a private discussion, a relatively personal time and space to discuss our comments without being disturbed by other students." Some students' views were negative. They noticed the disadvantages of online Zoom discussion, such as lack of body language and facial expression. One student mentioned the problem of unstable network: • "The most difficult problem I had to face was the unstable network which seriously disturbed our discussion on Zoom. My peer could not hear me from time to time, only to hear some electric sound. Our discussion was often interrupted by the failure of connection." When asked whether they would like to attend Word-and-Zoom-based peer review activities again in the future, 65% expressed their willingness, while 14% showed their unwillingness and 21% remained undecided. Although most students were positive to Wording commenting (86%) and Zoom discussion (76%), they were somehow hesitant to choose this mode.

Students' Perception of Effectiveness and Usefulness of the CMC Peer Review
The second part of the questionnaire (questions 8 to 16) was asking students about their perception of effectiveness and usefulness of the CMC peer review. The results are shown in Table 6. When considering the review process, the majority of students were satisfied with teacher's training and Peer Review Form. The statistics show that 90% of students thought they had received sufficient training from the teacher and 93% considered Peer Review Forms useful to guide them in giving comments. Specific views in reflective journals included: • "The training was necessary and adequate. It gave me a very clear outline about what to do during the commenting and discussing parts." • "The peer review form gives us a better understanding of what we need to pay attention to when commenting. The error table lists all kinds of possible problems, so that we can compare them when we read the articles of our peers." • "Teacher's modeling is great. I seemed to do commenting on the sample essay with teacher together. Just following teacher's steps, I found many problems which I did not pay attention to before. I hope we can do this again in future classes." When evaluating the usefulness of peer review, remarkably, all students (100%) trusted their peer and all students agreed that CMC peer review activities were helpful in their text revision. The degree of usefulness in each specific area they perceived varied: 83% of students recognized the usefulness of peer reviews in improving organization; 79% agreed that peer reviews helped them enrich the content of their writing; 72% thought peer review helped them improve the language. These attitudes were also reflected in their journals, for instance: • "I love this peer review so much because my partner is very serious and responsible." • "The most helpful part is organization. My peer felt that my third and fourth arguments could be combined into one paragraph. After revision, I found it was much more concise and convincing." • "She helps me most with my connection between sentences. She found my sentence confusing. And later we found out it was the lack of connection which led to the potential misunderstanding. So, I add some connection phrases." • "My partner and I have different ways of thinking, so our writing styles vary a lot. She's good at creating a scenario and giving vivid details while I'm good at making summaries. The comments we gave are complementary. So, ideas development is the most helpful aspect." • "Very helpful, my partner gave me a lot of help in language. He helps me to distinguish the phrases between "lead sb. to sth." and "lead to sth." and the word "enforce" and "force"." Sometimes even though students could not find out the problem and give detailed suggestion, through discussion, they still came up with a solution. Students recognized this good impact of meaning negotiation. For instance: "I think some of her sentences are incoherent, but I couldn't tell which part is wrong. So, we discuss together and finally solve the problem." Apart from positive views, a few students expected improvement of partner's commenting skills, for instance: • "I think my peer's commenting skills are great, especially in grammar. But her skills are not very comprehensive enough. I hope she can pay attention on my organization, because I am weak in this aspect.
The survey results also show that at the end of the semester, 90% of students perceived improvement in their commenting skills and became more confident in giving comments. In terms of the long-term impact of peer review, the results are also very positive: 90% thought that Peer review activities are helpful in improving their writing ability. The long-term benefits mentioned in students' reflective journals included most of benefits reported in the peer review literature: a better understanding of good writing, development of a sense of audience, critical thinking, consolidation of language knowledge and a habit of self-regulatory behaviours, etc. Specific views included: • "Peer review gives me a better understanding of the criteria of a good essay. Consequently, I pay more attention to these criteria when I write next time." • "I like to read my peer's writing. To my surprise, some of my peer's opinions are quite different from mine. Reading her writing gave me another perspective on the same topic. I learn different writing styles and skills through comparing her essay and mine." • "It appears that the ideas contained in our words are not as clear as we thought they would be when we wrote them, as least not for the readers. We seemingly tend to be more subjective than we think. Therefore, it's essential for us to use certain writing techniques we learnt from the class. For instance, as a reviewer, I discovered that using conjunction would definitely make a paragraph easier to read, but I did not realize this before no matter how many times the teacher had emphasized the importance of conjunctions. However, once I experienced the difference that a conjunction could make to the structure of a paragraph, this part of knowledge was activated and would not fade easily." instead of simply accept them. Also, self-reflection will occur in my own writing." • "After review activities, my partner and I would try to verify some confusing points. We did dictionary work and searched all over the Internet. Many of our confusions were untangled and the knowledge was consolidated." • "I would check my own writing to see whether there were some problems listed in review form before giving it to my peer so that I would not feel embarrassed when my errors were picked up by my peer, especially those simple errors."

Conclusion
This study aims to investigate the effects of the two-step CMC peer review process (Word commenting followed by Zoom discussion) in English writing courses for EFL learners, and students' perceptions of this mode. The findings are encouraging.
Firstly, the proportions of revision-oriented comments in three rounds of CMC peer review activities remained at a high level of above 85%. Secondly, students gave relatively balanced comments. Although they gave more local comments probably due to Word's automatic check of spelling and grammar, the ratio of revision-oriented comments in global areas to revision-oriented comments in local areas was more balanced (40% vs 60%), compared with Liou and Saddle's results. Even though global revision-oriented comments were less than local ones, students did not overlook the global issues. They gave second biggest proportion of revision-oriented comments in content. Also, more students considered peer comments useful in improving their global issues than local issues. Thirdly, the adoption rates of revision-oriented comments were also at a high level (63%−73%) compared with those reported in previous studies. Fourthly, most students held positive attitudes toward this two-step CMC peer review and perceived this new mode useful in their text revision and development of writing ability. 65% of them expressed their willingness to attend this mode of review activities in the future.
The favorable results can be explained by two reasons. Firstly, the speech-based online Zoom discussion seemed more efficient than text-based communication tools such as MSN, Blackboard and MOO because students did not need to type on screen. In the private breakout rooms, students could see each other and shared documents when talking. This greatly promoted their communication and subsequent adoption of comments. In their study, Ho and Savignon (2007) argued that lack of oral discussion was "most common drawback" for CMC peer review and that was why most students preferred face-to-face peer review. Zoom discussion can overcome this drawback. Secondly, the students had gained experiences of peer review in the previous semester, so they were familiar with the process and their collaboration with classmates was smooth.
However, there are some unfavorable results. The major one is that the number of comments students gave in the last round of peer review activity decreased dramatically. In his one-year longitudinal study on Chinese undergraduate EFL students, Wang (2014) discovered that students' perceived usefulness of peer feedback decreased over time. This study partly coincides with Wang's results that students' enthusiasm for peer review decreased over time because of the boredom of the same task pattern. The heavy workload of electronic commenting mode and long-time online classes of this semester exacerbated the situation and the students expressed their tiredness near the end of semester. This tiredness may explain why, in the end-of-semester questionnaire, students were reluctant to choose CMC peer review in the future even though most of them recognized its advantages and usefulness.
Another problem is lack of teacher's interference during Zoom discussion. In the previous semester, while students conducted face-to-face classroom discussion, the teacher could observe in a distance and interfere when necessary and students could ask for help at any time. In Zoom discussion, however, students discussed in separate breakout rooms. The teacher could join each room, but I did not do that in order not to disturb them. In their first reflective journal, some students mentioned that they did not know what to do when they could not reach an agreement in discussion. In the second and third rounds, I made some adjustments by telling students that they could invite me to join them when needed or they could make an appointment with me after class. But only two groups invited me and no group took the opportunities of outside-class teacher-student conference as they might not want to bother. On the whole, the teacher's interference was not immediate and sufficient enough. Further research is needed to explore how teacher can interfere and provide adequate support in this context.
The results of this study shed light on the future EFL writing class. Firstly, it reveals that despite some negative results, the two-step CMC peer review process with Word commenting followed by discussion via online video conferencing system can be used as a useful tool in EFL writing class. Secondly, workload needs to be taken into consideration. When students show tiredness, the teacher needs to make some adjustments, for instance, reducing the times of review activity or change certain pattern to achieve the balanced use of traditional mode and CMC mode just as Ho (2015) also suggested. Thirdly, more interference is needed in discussion session.
Due to the small number of participants, this study has some limitations. What's more, in the second step of peer review, students' discussions in each breakout rooms were not recorded to analyze their turns and discourses. Thus, Future study could include more students. Researcher can also track students' performance in discussion to find out how online video conferencing system can facilitate peer review activities.