Study of Verbal Peer Feedback on the Improvement of the Quality of Writing and the Transfer of Knowledge in Francophone Students in Grade 4 Living in a Minority Situation in Canada

The rather disappointing results obtained by francophone students in New Brunswick with regard to writing, demonstrate the problem of learning French in a minority situation in the Canadian context. The recent reforms to the school system aim, among other things, to improve the quality of French written by francophones by directly involving the students in their learning, in order to promote the transfer of learning. The goal of this paper is to present the results of an action research studying this paradigm. In fact, through the group meetings where the writers received oral comments from their peers, the four fourth-grade students learned to manage the writing process by means of these social interactions. More specifically, they succeeded in improving the overall quality of their texts between the first and final drafts. This analysis also reveals signs of transfer with regard to grammatical spelling.