Peer Feedback of Students' Original Stories to Improve Writing in an Online Learning-Environment

Abstract

In the Ecuadorian context, several studies have been carried out to demonstrate that EFL learners struggle with some weaknesses when writing in English, mainly because of the interference of the native language and lack of accuracy. For instance, Cabrera et al. (2014) found that writing skills were embedded with semantic, syntactic, and morphological mistakes such as misuse of verbs, personal and object pronouns, omissions, overuse of articles, false cognates, and invented words. The negative interference of Spanish in developing writing skills in English resulted from word-by-word translation and L1 thinking as a learning strategy; however, according to the author, there is a lack of teaching strategies to prevent those errors. The study carried out by Soto et al. (2020) in three Ecuadorian public universities evidenced that the fossilization of these weaknesses in English students' knowledge is one of the reasons for errors since they might not have received appropriate feedback. Furthermore, the researchers explained that in most cases, the null exposure of students to the target language is related to Spanish interference. In a recent participant observation in the institution where this study will be conducted, it was evident that 1st BGU students struggle with Spanish interference due to a lack of exposure to the target language in their immediate environment. Then, their writing production was embedded with mechanical, syntactic, and morphological errors related to direct translation from their L1. Therefore, a proposal with practical activities is required to enhance their writing competence through a peer feedback strategy.