A Study on the English Writing Revision Behaviors of Vocational College Students: A Comparison Based on Teacher Feedback and Peer Feedback

Abstract

This study investigates revision behaviors of vocational college students in English writing under two feedback conditions: teacher feedback and peer feedback. Accurate technical writing is also essential in engineering disciplines such as electromagnetic waves, antennas, and propagation, where local language accuracy and global logical coherence directly affect the communication of experimental methods and design results. Although previous research has shown that both forms of feedback can support second-language writing development, relatively limited attention has been paid to how vocational students respond to feedback during revision. To address this gap, the study adopts a small-scale comparative design involving 64 first-year students from a public vocational college in China over an eight-week instructional period. Students completed four practical English writing tasks, and their first drafts, feedback sheets, revised drafts, scores, and interview responses were analyzed. Revisions were coded by level, type, uptake, and textual effect. The findings indicate that teacher feedback produced a higher overall uptake rate and was especially effective in stimulating local revisions involving grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, and accuracy. Peer feedback generated a larger proportion of global revisions, particularly in idea clarification, paragraph development, coherence, and reader awareness. The study concludes that teacher and peer feedback serve different pedagogical functions and should be combined strategically in process-oriented writing instruction, including technical writing training for electromagnetic engineering students.