Analysing online peer editing behaviours and their relationship with students’ short-term and long-term writing improvement

This study examined the relationship between comments and track changes, as two different online peer editing behaviours mediated by Google Docs, and the improvement of learners’ academic writing quality in the short term and long term in the second language (L2) learning context. Participants were 239 graduate students taking scientific writing classes at a Korean university and were grouped into dyads to conduct online peer editing. Over the course of 16 wk, each student completed an individual writing pre-test, four writing assignments with initial drafts and final versions, and an individual writing post-test. Four different writing scores of each section of a scientific research manuscript were examined in the study. Overall, the results illustrate meaningful relationships between online peer editing behaviours and L2 learners’ individual writing. These results show that comments have a significantly positive relationship with student long-term writing performance, while track changes are positively associated with the quality of student short-term writing performance. This suggests that the effectiveness of online editing varies according to different peer editing behaviours. This study contributes to the expanding body of research on how online peer editing is related to student academic writing performance, and addresses a gap in existing research by demonstrating how long and short-term writing quality may be related to different peer editing behaviours.