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c. The Benefits of Peer Feedback
Peer feedback is believed to provide several advantages. The work of Hyland 2003: 199 claims that peer feedback enables the students to develop their critical
reading skills. Not only developing the students’ critical reading skill, peer feedback also gains the students’ skill necessary to critically revise their own writing Zhang,
1995, as cited in Hyland 2003: 198. Peer feedback, then, can enhance active learner participation Hyland, 2003: 199. According to Lewis 2002: 18, the students can
save their time in revising their writing based on the feedback from their peers, as teacher usually spends more time in giving feed back. Further, peer feedback creates
an authentic social context for interaction and learning Mittan, 1989, as cited in Hyland, 2003: 198. It implies that the students could learn form each other and
practice in how to get along with others. Cooperating together in giving feedback also results in the students’ esteem. Working together, the students are supposed to
feel responsible for participating, therefore, in this activity, leadership is distributed
Larsen-Freeman, 2000: 168. As a result, the students are more confident.
d. Does peer feedback work?
It is comprehensible that writers need to write for audience read: readers. By utilizing peer feedback, the students are given an opportunity to gain feedback
from authentic readers, which are their peers, as well as to understand the readers’ needs. The presence of authentic readers is considered important in learning to write
as basically writing is social interaction between writers and readers. So, when the students write for no purpose or for no reader, the communication does not take
place. The work of Hyland 2002: 35 states that writing is not an act of an isolated
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individual, but a joint endeavor between writers and readers. Writing, then, is fundamentally dialogic. Writing, then, is a conversation between writers and readers
in an ongoing activity. Sokolik 2003: 93 suggests that feedback should be helpful and meaningful
to be effective to create successful language use. Therefore, peer feedback should be helpful and meaningful to build successful language use. Despite many cons toward
the implementation of peer feedback in writing class, according to Rollinson 2005, peer readers can provide useful feedback in writing classroom. This notion is verified
by the research conducted by Rollinson in 1998 that revealed that 80 of feedbackcomments from peers were considered valid. In addition, it was found that
only 7 of the comments were considered damaging. Further, the work of Mendonca and Johnson 1994, as cited in Hyland, states that writers make use of
peer feedback in their revisions despite their second language proficiency, group dynamics and prior knowledge. It entails the fact that the students can revise their
writing effectively on the basis of feedback form their peer readers.
e. Peer Feedback as the Implementation of Cooperative Learning
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