According to Liu and Hansen in Kitchakarn 2009, peer response is the way of interaction between students to share or exchange
information with each other. Peer response plays an important role in writing. Peer’s comments can lead to the meaningful source of information
in the revising stage. Peer’s comments from revision can be used to
develop vocabulary, organization and content of writing. Writing teachers used the peer response to encourage students to revise their writings.
The definitions above show that peer responses is a way of collaborative learning in which students respond to one another’s
work of writing. The responses can be a comment to help another students get a better development in writing process.
b. Importance of Peer Response
Peer response, in Indonesia, is one of the new methods in teaching- learning English in which is still rarely to apply. Yet, it is actually
important to improve students’ capability in English, more in writing
because it gives many benefits. James 1981: 48-50 and Grimm 1986: 91-94 as quoted by Reid
1993:207 state that one of the greatest benefits of peer response groups is the immediate presence of the real-world readers.
Researcher of both NES and ESL writing have demonstrated that, with carefully designed and implemented peer response groups, the
concept of audience provided by peer response allows writers to think
not just about readers as readers but also to actually read the text through the eyes of potential readers, trying to judge the meaning these
readers would make. As a result, students begin to adopt the perspectives of their audiences and to comprehend their text.
Moreover, Lui and Hansenin in Kitchakarn 2009:74 supported the peer review for several reasons. First, the students have another reader for
their written work, not only the teacher. Secondly, when students make errors they do not detect in their own work, they can avoid penalty.
Thirdly, while evaluating othe r students’ papers, they can improve their
ability to judge their own writing. Kitchakarn 2009:75 also states that in the revising stage of
the writing process, it requires various types of activities responding to students’ written work including peer feedback or peer response.
Feedback from the readers plays an important role for improving writing. Any suggestions got from the readers can reflect on
the writers’ performance, leading to writing improvement.
Ferris 2003:70 adds that from these theoretical perspectives, a number of practical benefits of peer response for L2 writers have been
suggested by various authors: 1 Students gain confidence, perspective, and critical thinking skills from
being able to read texts by peers writing on similar tasks. 2 Students get more feedback on their writing than they could from the
teacher alone.
3 Students get feedback from a more diverse audience bringing multiple perspectives.
4 Students receive feedback from non-expert readers on ways in which their texts are unclear as to ideas and language.
5 Peer review activities build a sense of classroom community In addition, the researcher concluded that the peer response is a
student-centered, active learning strategy that increases student engagement in the course. More benefits of peer response are listed below.
1 Student authors: a Refine their ideas as a result of the feedback they receive.
b Focus on writing as a process that emphasizes editing and revisions. c Develop a better sense of audience.
d Improve their work before it’s submitted for grading.
e Are motivated to produce high-quality work, since they know their peers will be critiquing it.
2 Student reviewers: a Gain insights about their own work from reading other assignments.
b See other approaches to an assignment or perspectives of an issue. c Become familiar with important aspects of the assignment as they
use the rubric or criteria to perform the review. d Improve their ability to read a paper critically.
e Strengthen their communication skills, especially in respect to critiquing and providing feedback.
f Gain knowledge of a wider variety of course topics. In brief, peer response technique gives many benefits for teaching-
learning of writing. Beside to make the students think as the real writers, it also makes the students think as the potential readers. The students can
measure their capability in writing and describe the mental processes when they write.
c. The Implementation of the Peer Response in Teaching Writing
