Abstract:
This study set out to investigate the effect of peer- editing as a metacognitive strategy on the development of writing. It was hypothesized that peer-editing could be used to raise grammatical and compositional awareness of the learners. Forty pre-intermediate sophomores at Islamic Azad University-Tabriz Branch participated in the study, taking the course Writing I. To warrant the initial homogeneity of the groups, a nonequivalent pretest –posttest design was selected and the groups were randomly determined as the control and the experimental groups, each with twenty subjects. The treatment following the pretest involved a three-phase planning procedure including: consciousness awareness via error recognition activities, error categorizing activities, and self/peer editing. Statistical analysis of the post-test composition did not reveal any significant difference between the two groups. It seems that peer-editing entails a firm grammatical foundation which needs to be formed early in the process of language learning. The results underscore the need to reorient the method of teaching grammar at university level in a way to accommodate a task-based approach to cognitive and metacognitive strategies-based training.
Machine summary:
The need to help students develop and improve their self/peer-edit skills, as part of their leaning strategies, has been recognized by various specialists and is based on the recognition of the significant role of grammatical accuracy in academic success (Janapolous, 1992; Vann, Lorenz, & Meyer, 1991; Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984, as cited in Ferris, 2002; and Santos, 1988).
Another impetus comes from the researchers and language teachers who have become aware of the need to help students self- edit their writing (Ascher, 1993; Fox, 1992; Bates, Lane & Lange, 1993; Raimes, 1992).
Thus, the present research was conducted to estimate the effect of this approach on the development of writing skill in Iranian university students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).
The present study took the first option and attempted to assess the effect of self/peer editing on the development of both grammatical and compositional skills in English students taking Writing Course I.
Non- Native Research Articles in Applied Linguistics and Engineering 62 Farahman Farrokhi Safoora Emami The Effect of Visual Advance Organizer and Types of Passages on EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension 99 Gholam Reza Kiany Sara Jalali Comparative Critical Reading Strategy and Writing Achievement of Iranian EFL Learners Mojgan Rashtchi Mohammad Aghajanzadeh 117 The Significance of Peer-Editing in Teaching Writing to EFL Students 131 Zohreh Seifoori Abstracts in Persian 154 v Notes from the Editor-in-Chief The Editorial Board of the Journal of Applied Linguistics is delighted to make the publication of the second issue of the journal possible although inevitably behind schedule.