two peer review modes: examining students’ commenting patterns, revisions, and attitudes in developing academic writing skills

This study examines how different two modes of face-to-face and mobile-mediated peer review (ffpr versus mmpr) affect the commenting patterns based on the international english language testing system (ielts) assessment criteria and actual revisions among l2 academic writers. moreover, the students’ attitudes towards peer review will be explored to demonstrate how they mediate between the comments received from their peers and subsequent revisions which might result in writing development. a 16-session ielts academic writing course was held in a private university in vancouver, canada and seventy-two english for academic purpose (eap) students participated to exchange peer comments in the classroom and in a mobile application called telegram. in order to conceptualize the peer comments in both groups, the ielts academic writing assessment criteria were used. the results indicated that the mmpr groups generated significantly more comments with more revision-oriented responses and actual revisions. in addition, the mmpr groups’ notes were mainly in terms of lexical resources and grammatical range and accuracy, whereas the ffpr groups centered their topics on task achievement and coherence and cohesion. finally, based on the results, not only both ffpr and mmpr students showed positive attitudes toward peer review sessions at the end but their negative attitudes decreased. generally, mmpr students showed more positive attitudes, yet the difference was not significant.