The Effect of Structured Peer Feedback on Undergraduate Students’ Academic Writing Performance

Abstract

Academic writing is an important component of undergraduate education, yet many students experience difficulties in organizing ideas, developing arguments, using academic language, and revising written work. Structured peer feedback has been proposed as an instructional strategy that can support students’ writing development by encouraging them to evaluate written work, identify strengths and weaknesses, and apply suggestions during revision. This study examined the effect of a structured peer-feedback intervention on undergraduate students’ academic writing performance and writing self-confidence.

A quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test design was used. The participants were 80 undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year academic writing course at a public university. Students were assigned to an experimental group that participated in a six-week structured peer-feedback programme and a comparison group that received regular teacher feedback. Academic writing performance was measured using an analytical writing rubric, while writing self-confidence was measured using a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The simulated results indicated that students in the experimental group demonstrated greater improvement in organization, argument development, use of evidence, coherence, and language accuracy than students in the comparison group. The experimental group also reported higher levels of confidence in planning, reviewing, and revising academic texts.

The findings suggest that structured peer feedback may be a valuable formative assessment practice in undergraduate writing instruction. However, the results presented in this manuscript are simulated and are included solely as dummy content for website development and journal layout testing.