Cognitive Conflicts and Resolutions in Online Text Revisions: Three Profiles

This study investigates how college students solve their cognitive conflicts when receiving peers’ suggestions and corrections in online text revision. A sample of 45 undergraduate students were recruited to read their peer writers’ texts, edit peer writers’ errors, evaluate peer editors’ corrections and suggestions, and finally rewrite their own texts. Stratified sampling was employed to identify three profiles from students I, II, and III in representing participants’ resolution process of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium respectively. Results of this study showed that student I seemed to be unaware of cognitive conflicts between her first draft (prior knowledge) and peer editors’ corrections and suggestions (new information). She then directly duplicated peer editors’ corrections into her final draft. This resulted in few differences between her first and final drafts in spite of some revisions in grammatical forms. In contrast, student II and III were aware of cognitive conflicts between their first drafts and peer editors’ suggestions and corrections. They were actively engaged in the process of evaluation in making choices and decisions on accepting or rejecting peer editors’ suggestions and corrections. They then revised their texts in local revision (grammatical corrections), global revision (corrections on the style, organization, or development of a text), and perspective revision (e.g. to view their own texts from readers’ perspectives). This study suggests the importance of arousing students’ language awareness of cognitive conflicts in the process of text revision by evaluating each correction and suggestion from peers.