A Model of Critical Peer Feedback to Facilitate EFL Writing in Online Context

Peer feedback in EFL writing has been regarded as time-consuming, and inefficient. An approach is to study the mental process of feedback to improve its quality. It is believed that higher-order thinking can produce high-order peer feedback in higher-level writing. In this study, “critical thinking” is explored to facilitate peer feedback and writing with higher-order thinking skills. “Critical peer feedback” is conceptualized with the integration of critical thinking and feedback in order to improve the quality of feedback. This study aims to study the process of critical peer feedback through blogs and discussion the model of critical peer feedback. A qualitative case study is conducted with six junior students majoring Business English in a Chinese university. Three models of critical thinking are transferred to the participants in the workshops. Three kinds of data including semi-structured interviews, six writing assignments and the artifacts of critical peer feedback, are analyzed by Nivivo 10. The finding reveals that the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy is more acceptable for the beginners of critical peer feedback which provides a six-step model of critical thinking. The conclusion of critical peer feedback model in online context may be significant to its further practice in various courses.