The Effects of Peer Correction in Flipped Essay-Writing Classrooms: A Study of Selected Universities in Vietnam

The study focused on a practical question in university writing classes: what changes when peer correction is built into a flipped lesson sequence, especially after students have produced a first draft. Over five months in the second semester of 2024–2025, 150 second-year English-major students from three universities in Ho Chi Minh City took part in a mixed-methods quasi-experiment. Seventy-five students experienced the flipped model with structured peer correction, and 75 followed the comparison condition. Nine English lecturers contributed written interview responses. The data included pre- and post-test essays, a student questionnaire, lecturer interviews, and the peer-correction checklists used during the intervention. Writing scores were examined statistically, while interview responses were coded for recurring themes. The experimental group moved from a mean of 5.18 on the pre-test to 6.45 on the post-test; the control group changed from 5.19 to 5.12. Students also described greater confidence in exchanging feedback and reported that the checklist helped with revision, organization, and time management. Lecturers mainly valued having more class time to discuss drafts and respond to individual problems. The results do not separate the effect of peer correction from the other elements of the flipped design, but they show that checklist-guided peer response can function effectively within this kind of writing course.