Collaborative correction, also known as peer correction, means that students correct each other rather than the teacher doing the job. In this article, I would like to look at this teaching technique with a special focus on peer correction of written work. The article will try to answer the question: Which benefits can teachers garner when using peer correction? It will also look at possible pitfalls. In addition, it will illustrate how to instruct students to hopefully make the most of the technique. I will also highlight some published material dealing with the topic and, finally, I would like to show the results of a survey on the topic carried out with some of the groups I teach.
Why do peer correction?
Some people may ask the question why we as teachers should ask our students to correct each other’s written texts, when we as highly trained professionals could very likely do a much better job, which in turn would give our students much more reliable feedback. That might be true in many instances, but one major aspect which we should not lose sight of is the sheer number of texts many of us have to correct if we teach several groups. This can have two negative effects for our students: firstly, it may lead to a teacher feeling overwhelmed and so they might correct students’ work more sloppily or take longer to return texts, which, in turn, makes it more difficult for students to engage with a text since they might well have forgot what it was about. The second downside of teaching multiple groups, which inevitably leads to a large volume of texts to correct (and I am not even counting texts written in exam situations here) is that teachers understandably switch into a kind of self-protection mode whereby they set far fewer written tasks to avoid any overload. And since there is no way for most teachers to avoid correcting written exam tasks, cutting down on work produced for practice just makes sense. In fact, in the age of AI, the decision to reduce the number of writing tasks may be easier for teachers these days, since many question the validity of written homework tasks anyway. If one or both of these two situations occur (teachers being overwhelmed or a reduction of set writing tasks), students suffer negative effects as far as feedback on their written work is concerned.
Therefore, if done well, peer correction can definitely take some of the workload from teachers and, at the same time, increase the number of texts which students can write to practise, and they will also get immediate feedback from their peers. I usually ask my students to write and peer correct their texts within one lesson (I might, however, instruct them to write a plan or outline in the previous lesson to save time). This allows a logical flow: from writing, to peer correcting someone else’s text and, finally, to receiving feedback on their own text. Doing writing practice like this also avoids problems with students forgetting to bring in their texts from home or not being able to find them. What is more, this can also give you an idea of what your students can produce when working under time constraints without the help of AI (similar to what they will have to do in an exam situation). Sometimes it may be useful to ask learners to work in pairs and then also to peer correct in pairs. This can help speed up the process of writing and correcting a little (depending on the pair, of course). It also makes it somewhat easier for the teacher to keep an overview of what is going on and then give feedback (more about this aspect in the later section about how to instruct and conduct peer correction in practice).
For students, the benefits of such an approach can be numerous if the task is done properly and with concentration. As mentioned above, students can receive some feedback on how quickly they can come up with a useful text on a given topic (thus telling them if they still need more practice or not). The part when they correct someone else’s text can be very useful practice in proofreading (which my students are always required to do with their own texts, including a confirmation at the end of the text that they did so). It tends to be easier to some extent – and maybe more fun – to find mistakes in someone else’s text than in one’s own text. When correcting, students have to carefully reflect whether the person who wrote the text in front of them has:
- considered all the content points;
- structured their text nicely (paragraphs, cohesive devices);
- used good language for the task; and
- used it correctly.
This can, in turn, help them reflect on their own text, since the same questions apply and may be useful for future texts, too.
Another very important aspect of the whole peer correction process is the feedback phase. Students should not simply hand the texts back to their peers but they need to provide them with feedback, i.e. argue what was done well and suggest improvements where necessary. If students can explain which mistakes were made and how they can be corrected, this also means they themselves become aware of these problems and will hopefully be able to avoid them in their own texts in the future.
Some pitfalls
Of course, there are also some pitfalls when it comes to peer correction. As mentioned above, one way to avoid the problem of not enough students having their written texts with them is to ask your students to write and correct the texts in the same lesson. The whole process does not work well if several students have nothing to do and just sit waiting until the others are finished. If this is, for whatever reason, not possible (e.g. not enough time during the lesson, students are too slow), then my advice is to collect all the written texts at the end of the lesson or, if working on computers, have your students send their texts to you electronically. In the following lesson, everyone can start from where they left off. I do not recommend peer correction as part of a homework writing task; chances are (at least in my experience) some of your students do not do the task or forget to bring it to class, which immediately renders the peer correction phase less than useful.
Another aspect that can cause a few problems is the correction part itself. It is not always easy to turn students into conscientious correctors. They sometimes seem to gravitate to the different ends of two poles. Either their friends, whose text they are supposed to assess, have allegedly written a perfect text with absolutely no mistakes or they manage to find mistakes which most teachers would not see as such – and even add missing commas (at least in their opinion), crossing all the ‘t’s and dotting every ‘i’. One way to counter this tendency is not to let close friends correct each other’s text, instead allocating people randomly or really making sure students correct a text by someone they are not too close to. If you decide to have students work in pairs, both for writing and for correcting, make sure not to put together two very weak students. This will very likely make the writing and the correcting process slow and will therefore cause delays for everyone. Two very proficient students, on the other hand, might be very quick, therefore finding a good mixture can be part of the success formula here.
How to instruct students
One major aspect for achieving good results with peer correction is to prepare students well for the task. This starts with the preparation for the writing task itself and includes being familiar with the instructions for the text they are supposed to write. Then, they can create an outline of about 50 words which should show the structure of the text and include some main content points.
The next stage is about making clear how long students have to complete the writing task after having done the outline, usually 20–30 minutes should suffice, depending on the length of text required and the language level of the students, of course. Students should also know they should treat this writing task like any other text they might write for homework, this means:
- use an English spellchecker if they are writing on the computer in Word;
- use their outline efficiently; and
- proofread their text carefully a few times.
Once the time is up, texts should be exchanged with their peers and now the most sensitive part of the overall task starts. It is, of course, not enough to simply tell students to ‘correct’ the texts but, if we teachers want some more useful outcome, it is important to specify exactly how the texts should be corrected. We have to bear in mind that we ask our students to do something which is usually done by highly professional teachers who have dedicated years of their lives to studying English – which almost seems a little too much to ask – on the other hand, we expect our students to correct their own texts all the time when they do some proofreading. Seen in that light and with the correct guidance from us, the task becomes feasible. Here you can find a typical instruction I use when doing peer correction in class.
Peer correction
- Pass your text on to your allocated peer or peer pair.
- Read carefully through the text written by your classmate(s).
- Take a look at the following aspects (you may have to read the text several times):
- Have all the content points (instructions) been dealt with successfully?
- Is the text structured well (paragraphs, linking devices)?
- Does the text contain useful language (vocabulary, grammar structures)?
- Are there any mistakes regarding language (vocabulary, grammar)?
- Use a pencil or the ‘Review’ function in Word to correct grammar, vocabulary, content mistakes (e.g. any part of the instructions left out) or structural mistakes (e.g. no paragraphs).
- But, only correct things when you are really sure they are wrong.
- If you are not sure, underline or highlight the word(s) in question and add a question mark.
- Once you are finished, get together with your peer (or the peer pair you work with) and go through each other’s texts step by step, explaining mistakes you have found and discussing things you are not sure about, but also mentioning things which are done well.
If you cannot agree, ask your teacher for help!
- Finally, compare with the key or the model solution provided by your teacher and discuss alternatives if necessary.
When the peer correction phase is underway, it is important that the teacher is active and ready to support the students if necessary. This means keeping an eye on what is corrected or discussed and offering support whenever necessary without interfering too much, since you do not want to hamper the process or do the work and thinking for them (I know it is a fine line). It is usually a good idea to take a quick look at the correction once students are in the feedback section to make sure they did not miss anything essential.
If you have a key for the writing task (either provided by your coursebook or written by yourself), this can be shown as the very last step of the process. Students can compare their own text with the key, maybe add ideas or useful words and phrases they would like to remember, and it is also a good springboard for discussion of other possible ways of dealing with the task. This last aspect is something which may happen very easily as part of the peer correction process and is often something that does not occur so naturally if written tasks are done at home and corrected by the teacher, as it is more difficult to find connections in class a week after the texts were written. Even if you do peer correction, it might sometimes not be possible to look at and discuss different solutions at the end of a lesson which already included writing and peer correcting. In this case, the discussion can still be done in the following lesson when trains of thought are hopefully still fresh in people’s minds. If you can allocate a double lesson to such a writing process, this would obviously be even more useful.
How is the topic received in publications?
Let us take a quick look at how some other authors assess the usefulness of peer correction and if new perspectives can be found which are useful for this topic.
Penny Ur (2024) states that it seems that, all in all, students prefer to be corrected by the teacher rather than their peers. She continues, however:
On the other hand, peer editing can be a time-saving and useful technique: it helps to present it as ‘helping each other to express things as well as possible’ rather than ‘correcting each other’. Also, from the point of view of the peer-editor, critical reading for style, content and language accuracy is a valuable exercise in itself.
– Penny Ur (2024:157)
When introducing the technique to students, it is especially worth keeping in mind the idea that peer correction is more of a tool that helps students support each other and not as a way of students passing judgement or even grading each other.
Ur also explains the reason students like teacher feedback better than peer feedback is that they believe their teachers can assess them more reliably (Ur, 2024:168). As already mentioned, this is an argument that can, by and large, be accepted. However, the benefits of peer correction as a way of reducing the workload for the teacher, of giving students the chance to practise more writing tasks, and of improving their proofreading skills should also not be overlooked. In addition, teachers can reassure their students regarding reliability by being present and supportive during the peer-correcting phase. What we should bear in mind is that teacher reliability is also very unlikely to be 100 % and may suffer if certain aspects like fatigue or lack of motivation become an issue.
Li and Hu (2024) cited Yang et al. (2006:2) arguing that peer feedback can foster ‘student autonomy’ which makes it a valuable addition to teacher feedback. They also mention that one additional advantage of peer feedback according to Gibbs (1999:2) is the speed with which feedback is given and that it turns a private effort (writing a text on your own at home) into a more public one and stress the fact that teenagers especially may be quite susceptible to an evaluation given by their peers.
This argument ties in with a small-scale study conducted by Vo Thi Thanh Mai (2022) at Tra Vinh University, Vietnam. One of the results was that students felt encouraged to take their writing more seriously once they knew that peer correction would be the technique used, because they felt they were writing for a real audience not ‘just’ their teacher. Another positive aspect mentioned was that peer correction can make it ‘easier for students to talk about issues because it is less intimidating or stressful than instructor correction’ (Vo, 2022:16). This last argument is definitely worth keeping in mind as a positive factor of peer correction. Sometimes students manage to explain certain language aspects more quickly and more effectively to their peers than any teacher can.
Researching my own students – the main results
I decided to do a survey with some of my own students since I was interested to see what their attitudes were compared to published opinions. I asked 38 students eight questions (multiple-choice options; statements they had to weigh from one = strongly disagree to five = strongly agree; open answer questions). My first question was whether they preferred peer or teacher correction and 37 of 38 students chose teacher correction as their preferred method. This ties in with the results and experience of Penny Ur as mentioned above. Furthermore, 35 of my students agreed or even agreed strongly with the statement ‘When my teacher corrects a text, I always know what is wrong or how to improve, or I ask the teacher for feedback’. 30 students thought the statement ‘When one of my peers corrects a text, I am worried they might miss something important’ was correct (agreed or strongly agreed).
When asked to weigh questions about the advantages of their peers correcting texts (for example, because it is easier to discuss feedback with their classmates, because they get immediate feedback or because they can learn a lot when doing peer correction) the opinions were often evenly distributed averaging at just above or below three.
I also asked my students an open question about possible advantages of peer correction. With the exception of four students who were either worried that their peers would not take such a task seriously and overlook important problems in their texts or generally thought that teachers should do the work they are paid for, 31 students (of the 35 who answered this question) came up with often very interesting positive aspects. One answer, which was given several times, was that peer correction gives students a new perspective which, in turn, may help them find new ideas and new words or phrases which can be used in the student´s next text. Others believed that their peers would take more time than their teacher on the correction and when explaining things, or they mentioned they can learn from a classmate’s texts and mistakes.
Another aspect which was touched upon several times by my students was that they are at a similar language level to their peers, which can be helpful when discussing problems or explaining things in a simpler way. They also hinted at the possibility of their peers understanding their way of thinking better than their teacher. One of my students answered the question as follows:
When my text is corrected by a classmate, I gain a fresh perspective, catch overlooked mistakes and improve my understanding. When I correct someone else’s text, it reinforces my own knowledge, sharpens my critical thinking and my communication skills.
I think this sums up some of the main advantages of peer correction very nicely.
Finally, I would like to stress that I am not proposing to outsource teacher correction completely to our students, but rather to see peer correction as a useful addition at times of heavy workloads or general stress. As seen above, it can also help increase the frequency of doing writing tasks and support the development of learner autonomy and reflection.
References
Li, X., Hu, W. (2024). ‘Peer versus teacher corrections through electronic learning communities and face-to-face classroom interactions and EFL learners’ passion for learning, speaking fluency and accuracy’. Helyon 10 4. Available from https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(24)01880-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2405844024018802
%3Fshowall%3Dtrue (Last accessed 15 November 2024).
Ur, P. (2024). A Course in English Language Teaching 3rd Edition. Cambridge University Press.
Vo, T.T.M. (2022). ‘EFL students’ attitudes towards teacher correction and peer correction in writing skills’. International Journal of Language Instruction 1 1:155–173. Available from https://ijli.org/index.php/journal/article/view/28 (Last accessed 15 November 2024).
Thomas Ziegelwagner studied English and history at the University of Vienna, Austria, and later, political education at the Donau-Universität Krems, Austria. He has a Master’s Degree in English and History and holds an MSc in Political Education. He has been teaching for more than 20 years, mostly in BHAK St Poelten, Austria (an upper secondary business college for students aged between 14 and 19); and since 2022 at the Centre for Business Languages and Intercultural Communication at the Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria. He is interested in teacher training, teaching English as a working language and in CLIL. He has recently got involved in e-learning and in facilitating the online learning process.
