From receiving to engaging: Collaborative oral languaging of teacher versus peer feedback by secondary school EFL learners

Abstract This classroom‐based study explores how low‐proficiency Chinese secondary school English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language (EFL) learners cognitively process teacher feedback and peer feedback in authentic classroom settings. Eighty‐two students from two classes completed three writing tasks over 8 weeks and received either written teacher feedback or peer feedback on their individually written tasks. Students then processed the feedback they received in dyads via what we term ‘collaborative oral languaging’. Findings revealed that although peer feedback was less accurate and covered fewer errors, it stimulated young and low‐proficiency EFL learners’ higher levels of cognitive processing over time, and elicited more frequent clarification requests, confirmation checks, and the use of external resources. In contrast, teacher feedback led to discussions that focused more narrowly on the comments provided. In both conditions, the opportunity to collaboratively process these two feedback sources encouraged learners to adopt an active stance in their paired discussion. The study suggests that collaborative feedback processing and diversifying the sources of written feedback can foster more self‐directed learning processes in text revision activities. These tasks show promise for implementation in teacher‐dominant classrooms, even with young and low‐proficiency EFL learners.