ESL students' perceptions of effectiveness in peer response groups

This study investigated Chinese and Spanish-speaking students' perceptions of their interactions in peer response groups in an ESL composition class. In a microethnographic study, three peer response groups in an advanced ESL composition class were videotaped for six consecutive weeks. After videotaping, researchers met with individual Chinese (N = 3) and Spanish-speaking (N = 2) group members. In each session, the researcher and the student viewed the videotapes of the peer response group in which the student had participated, and the students answered researcher questions about the group's interactions. The interviews were audiotaped, and the tapes were transcribed. The transcripts from the interviews were examined recursively by the researchers, and patterns were noted. This analysis yielded a description of the key participants' perceptions of their construction of peer response interaction. The analysis indicated that both the Chinese and Spanish-speaking students preferred negative comments that identified problems in their drafts. They also preferred the teacher's comments over those of other students and viewed grammar and sentence-level comments as relatively ineffective. The Chinese and Spanish-speaking students had different views, however, about the amount and kind of talk that was needed to identify problems.