An Analysis of Dyadic Interactional Patterns in Peer Reviewing Tasks in an ESL Language Classroom at a Malaysian Higher Educational Institute

Abstract

Flipped learning has emerged as an innovative educational approach that is increasingly prominent in higher education. This study investigated the patterns of dyadic interaction between peer reviewers in an ESL classroom and examined students’ perceptions of the flipped language classroom. Ten Malaysian female ESL students participated in the study. TOEFL scores, instructional videos, audio recordings, and writing tasks were used as data collection instruments. The recorded peer-review dialogues were transcribed using the transcription system developed by Storch (2002). Among the identified patterns of interaction, the collaborative pattern was the most frequent. Four of the five pairs predominantly displayed a collaborative pattern, while the expert/novice pattern was the least frequent across all pairs. The findings indicate that students tended to focus primarily on surface-level errors during peer feedback, and their revision activities showed relatively limited engagement with macro-level aspects of writing. Likewise, it was reported that students tend to concentrate on surface-level textual features in assessing the writing and consequently, overlook global errors like content and organization. The findings of the present study can have some implications for both teachers and students..