Empowering Chinese MA Students: Enhancing Academic Writing via Mobile Peer Assessment with Tencent Docs

In the present study, the application of mobile phones was investigated in AW courses for master students in China. Despite numerous studies on the integration of MALL into English classes, no previous study has examined whether mobile apps like Tencent Docs can be used for peer assessment. Tencent (腾讯) Docs is an online document that can be used to view, edit, and save Word, Excel, and PPT documents in real time. PA also refers to evaluating the quality of written texts by equal-status learners (Topping, ۲۰۰۹). In this research, two types of PA were utilized, technology-enhanced mode in the experimental group and traditional mode in the second control group (Liu & Edwards, ۲۰۲۱). The study was conducted with an experimental group where students were asked to engage actively in giving real-time and post-class feedback on their peers’ writings. In the first control group, the feedback was provided on the same platform by the instructor only, and in the second control group, the feedback was provided by the students on hard copies. The study’s findings indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control groups, emphasizing the role of mobile technology in improving students’ writing skills. Moreover, regarding PA and teacher assessment, the difference between the two groups was insignificant, revealing that giving feedback on mobile platforms was successful regardless of who was giving feedback. The findings underscore the potential role mobile Apps can play in improving students’ academic writing skills and the significant role of PA in academic writing classes. However, further studies are required to explore the foci of peer response and real-time vs. post-class feedback, as well as the level of students’ preparation for PA.

کلیدواژه ها:

Mobile Phones ، Tencent Docs ، Peer Assessment ، Chinese MA Students ، Academic Writing in English