The aim of this experiment is to explore the effectiveness of using group discussion and peer feedback in improving the essay writing skills of 11 grade students in geography lessons. Writing essays in geography lessons has been a challenge for high schoolers. In order to write a well-developed cause and solution essay about geographical phenomenon and incidents, not only should they be able to structure the essay correctly, use geography terms properly but also they need to think critically  to find solutions to given problems and explain the reason for their choices and consequences of their resolution. 

Coming up with new ideas individually is a difficult task to fulfill for many students, especially when originality of the solutions is a key criterion in the assessment criteria. As a result, if students share their strategies in groups, listen to their peers’ ideas , and practice including geographical terminology during the group discussion and in the whole class presentation , give and receive feedback from their peers and groupmates,  the task becomes much easier to complete. 

It requires students to brainstorm, plan, organize the structure, write an essay that has a meaningful content that is grammatically correct, it should also follow the spelling rules and punctuation. Students tend to make mistakes during this process without realising it themselves. Peer-editing is a collaborative learning technique in which the students provide feedback to their peers’ work (Hill, 2011). The objective of peer-editing is to improve the writing skills of the students and promote collaboration at the same time (Insai & Poonlarp, 2017). Peer feedback assists students to realize the mistakes in their writing and then improve it.  It will also enhance students’ critical thinking, and their confidence. Additionally, making students more comfortable with writing regularly within the geography discipline can increase the overall quality of their learning and help develop better communication skills (Winchell & Elder, 1992; Gedye & Chalkley, 2006).

In this study, a pre and post test was used to examine the effect of discussion, group work and peer feedback on the writing skills of students. Students were interviewed in intervals. The results of research illustrates that when students are involved in discussing their ideas and try to use geographical terminology and receive feedback from their peers their writing skills improve, they use the terminology  necessary for successful writing. Also the quality of the content that is to say, the quality of the solutions and examples given improves immensely. 

A mixed method approach was used in this experiment. Tools such as pre/post tests, an online survey, informal interviews, experimental and control groups were included. The topics were based on the school curriculum. Pretest was marked out of 15, and post test was taken from the results of summative assessment of the term. Overall, 16 students were involved in this experiment. 8 of which were considered as the control group and the 8 others as the experimental group. The duration of the experiment was 10 weeks. The students in the experiment group were given questions about the topic of writing to discuss in groups of 4, then present their ideas to the next group to receive feedback from them. Then they started to write an essay with the given criteria. On the other hand, students in the control group wrote the essay only using the assessment criteria individually without any discussion and did not receive peer feedback. The criteria that students in the control group used for writing included the structure ( definition of the problem, reasons and consequences, solutions with examples), terminology and originality of the idea. Students in the experimental group were divided into 3 groups. The first groups had to discuss the definition, statistics, they had to use related terminology in their speech,where this problem is found ( country or the area), what can be done for that. The second group talks about several reasons and consequences of the problem that can be seen in the world and use the necessary terminology during their speech. The third group had to find and speak about the solutions and the effects of the proposed solutions by including the terminology during their discussion. Each group presented their findings to the class and received feedback from their classmates. In the second stage, all groups wrote essays with the help of their group mates, they passed their writing to another group to receive feedback, and they edited their writing. Consequently, the teacher analyzed the final version to give feedback for the overall work. At the end of the experiment, students had to write an essay for the summative assessment of the term. They were also interviewed in intervals about the processes.

The findings illustrate that when students discuss the parts related to essay and receive feedback during the discussion and for their essay, they receive significantly higher marks and generally, the quality of the writing improves noticeably. Based on the pretest, both experimental and control groups received the same low marks for their essays. However, in the post test the average score of students increased to 8 out of 15, while the average score for the control group was 5 out of 15. The post test results of writings revealed that students’ critical interpretation of the problem, and the quality of given solutions were enhanced, they also used more correct terminologies, grammar and punctuations. During the interview they mentioned that this strategy had helped them develop their communication skills, made the boring writing process fun, and meaningful. By implementing discussion and feedback in the writing task, students engage in the classroom activities, and become the active learners of the classroom. When learning is active, students do most of the work (Cranton, 1989). This will motivate students to deepen their knowledge of the subject and lead them to prepare for academic success while providing the skills needed for lifetime learning. The inclusion of interactive activities and focused lessons using group discussion and peer feedback in the geography curriculum to improve geography essay writing skills appears to be a promising approach to enhance students' literacy.

Nur Muthmainnah, OPTIMIZING CRITICAL THINKING SKILL THROUGH PEER EDITING TECHNIQUE IN TEACHING WRITING. Vol. 7 No. 1 (2019): Volume 7, Issue 1, April 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22460/eltin.v7i1.p1-7 Satrio Ardi Nugroho. Improving the Writing Skill of the Students using Peer Editing. Vol-6, Issue-2; Mar-Apr, 2021 DOI: 10.22161/ijels