Guided Peer Feedback on Academic Writing Tasks using Facebook Notes: An Exploratory Study

One of the main constraints faced by writing teachers is providing timely one-to-one feedback on the students writing pieces at the different stages of a writing process. Peer feedback or peer review has been found by many studies to be beneficial when used correctly in assisting the writing teachers to provide more feedback to their students papers as well as give students practice with a range of skills important in the development of language and writing ability. With the popularity of online social networking websites such as Facebook as the medium of communication among students, this study is conducted to investigate the potential of using Facebook Notes as the medium of providing peer feedback to students written work. Planning, drafting, revising and editing are the four stages involved in a writing process. Guided peer feedback via the Facebook Notes could assist the teachers in ensuring that all the students writing pieces are reviewed at all the four stages of the writing process and consequently improve the quality of their written work. The first part of this action research explored the use of peer feedback at the planning stage of writing which was outlining. It was found that the students, with guidance from the writing teacher, were able to provide constructive feedbacks to their peers. The comments and suggestions posted on the Facebook Notes were found to be useful in helping their peers to improve their outlines and their first draft. Language teachers too could benefit this new tool in giving feedbacks to the students.