Using Blog-based Peer Comments to Promote L2 Writing Performance

Year 2021, Volume: 10 Issue: 2, 140 - 161, 31.12.2021

Zeynep Bilki Pelin Irgin

Abstract

This research aimed to understand to what extent 24 freshmen students registered in an online academic writing course provided peer comments in a blog-based writing setting and whether there was a significant difference in the proportion of L2 writer's peer comment types. Data included students’ blog-based peer comments on their friends’ written drafts produced in three different writing genres: expository, data-commentary, and argumentative. Frequency analysis and Chi-square test of independence and for goodness-of-fit were used to analyze peer comments. Results revealed that L2 writers provided online peer comments more on global areas than those on local areas across writing tasks and between the drafts in all tasks. There was a significant difference in the proportion of global and local areas of L2 writers identified in the first drafts of three writing tasks and a significant decrease in the provision of global and local comments from the first task to the final. This study provides implications for L2 academic writers and writing instructors concerning the use of blog-based peer comments and their types in the process of an academic writing course, where L2 writers experience blog-based academic writing and peer comment exchange in the light of training they have received.

Keywords

Online peer feedback, blogs, L2 writing, peer comment

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