In the field of educational psychology, learner engagement is often seen as a crucial prerequisite for success in learning. It is defined as learners’ physical and psychological energies devoted to accomplishing a learning task (Fredricks et al., 2004; Schunk and Mullen, 2012). While physical energies refer to the behavioral efforts learners put forth to successfully complete the task, psychological energies embody the cognitive readiness and emotional state of the learner during task completion. Education researchers posit that learner engagement is a key determinant of learning outcomes and compare it to “the holy grail of learning” (Sinatra et al., 2015, p. 1), as it reflects not only students’ level of mental activation but also their endeavor to seek for and participate in different learning activities.

SLA researchers have adapted the concept of learner engagement to the L2 context by focusing on students’ engagement with the target language (Svalberg, 2009) or engagement in task-based interaction (Philp and Duchesne, 2016). In general, the available research has mostly followed Svalberg’s model of learner engagement, since it establishes a direct link between engagement and language learning. This is especially true among studies into peer feedback because this type of activity amplifies language use and attention to form (e.g., Han and Hyland, 2015; Zheng and Yu, 2018; Yu et al., 2019). However, while focusing on engagement with language, these studies have overlooked the communicative nature of the peer feedback task—a two-way information exchange task between the writer and the reviewer or among the reviewers. Students’ learning experience in tasks is shaped by their use of language as well as the task itself. Therefore, learners’ physical and psychological engagement with the task and engagement in interacting with their peers are of equal importance to their engagement with the target language. Drawing on Philp and Duchesne’s (2016) framework of task engagement, the present study investigated learners’ affective, cognitive, behavioral, and social engagement in an L2 writing task where learners work jointly to provide feedback. By contextualizing the different domains of engagement in collaborative tasks, the research aimed to clarify the mechanism shaping learner engagement and make a fresh attempt to address the peer collaboration process in feedback activities.

Contemporary approaches to learner engagement have conceptualized it as a multidimensional construct, which has been mainly inspired by the model of Svalberg’s (2009) of engagement with language (EWL) and Philp and Duchesne’s (2016) model of task engagement (Engagement with the task, EWT). EWL is defined as “a cognitive, and/or affective, and/or social state and a process in which the learner is the agent and the language is the object and may be the vehicle (means of communication)” (Svalberg, 2009, p.244). The cognitive-affective-social trio focuses on learners’ attention to form which facilitates the construction of language awareness. It uncovers the multidimensional nature of engagement in the context of language learning and use. More recently, Philp and Duchesne (2016), also acknowledging the multifacetedness of engagement, proposed the model of EWT from an educational psychological perspective. EWT, situated in the context of task-based interaction, is defined as “a state of heightened attention and involvement” (Philp and Duchesne, 2016, p.3). It consists of four dimensions: cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional. EWL and EWT are not mutually exclusive. While EWL focuses particularly on how cognitive, affective, and social factors influence learners’ attention to the target language, EWT considers learners’ experience in carrying out an L2 activity, including their attention to both language form and task content. In a sense, EWT is a more complex and dynamic model than EWL to explain the process and outcome of L2 learning. Another similarity between the two models is their acknowledgment of the overlapping and interdependent nature of these dimensions (Lambert et al., 2017; Nakamura et al., 2021). For example, a learner who is disinterested in a task (i.e., emotionally disengaged) is likely to be behaviorally off task (i.e., behaviorally disengaged). Philp and Duchesne also contend that emotional engagement is central to EWT because it links other facets and decides whether learner engagement can be activated.

A substantial number of empirical studies have been conducted to explore the interaction between different dimensions of engagement. When drawing on the model of EWL to explore how task complexity and task mode mediated learners’ attention to language form, Baralt et al. (2016) found that learners’ social relationships with partners and their affective responses toward the task and their partners can facilitate or impede cognitive engagement. That is, when learners were supportive and interactive and perceived the task as useful and fun, they demonstrated greater cognitive engagement with the target language. Zhang (2021), also adopting the model of EWL, focused on how three dyads’ cognitive engagement was influenced by social and affective dimensions of engagement in a collaborative writing task. It was found that dyads which formed a more collaborative relationship and perceived the task as useful identified more language-related problems and elaborated on them. By contrast, a non-collaborative dyad that had negative perceptions of the task missed many opportunities to expand on their linguistic items. Although Philp and Duchesne (2016) also claim that the four dimensions in their EWT model are interdependent, there is a lack of empirical research attempting to solve the mystery. The present study aims to bridge the gap by examining how cognitive, behavioral, social, and affective engagement interacts with one another to influence learners’ task experience.

The conceptualization of learner engagement as a multifaceted and interdependent construct underpins the current study. In line with previous studies, we adapted the more complex engagement model by Philp and Duchesne (2016) which includes cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional dimensions. The ways we operationalized the four dimensions are as follows.

Cognitive engagement refers to sustained attention, mental effort, and self-regulation strategies (Helme and Clarke, 2001). In SLA, the idea of language-related episode (LRE) has been proposed to capture learners’ attention to the target language in collaborative tasks (Swain and Lapkin, 1998). According to Swain and Lapkin, LREs are incidences where learners talk about the language they produce, question the usage of the target language, and correct themselves or others.

Behavioral engagement is described as being “on-task” (Philp and Duchesne, 2016). Commonly used measures involve the number of words and turns and the amount of time on task (Lambert et al., 2017; Phung, 2017; Qiu and Lo, 2017). Some scholars argue that this dimension overlaps with the other three dimensions. That is, learners demonstrate their cognitive, social, and emotional engagement through behavioral indicators. For example, when learners are cognitively engaged, they deliberate over language features and task content. Their cognitive engagement is manifested in language output which overlaps with the measures of behavioral engagement such as turns and words (Baralt et al., 2016; Zhang, 2021).

Social engagement is associated with social relationships between learners, manifested by the level of mutuality and reciprocity between interlocutors. Informed by Storch’s seminal work on patterns of interaction, Philp and Duchesne (2016) argue that when learners are socially engaged, “they listen to one another, draw from one another’s expertise and ideas, and provide feedback to one another” (p.10). Storch (2002) measured learners’ equality and mutuality in peer interaction to indicate their engagement with the task as well as with each other’s contribution. This approach has been employed by a large volume of research which looks into learners’ role relationship in collaborative dialog (e.g., Watanabe and Swain, 2007; Watanabe, 2008; Storch and Aldosari, 2013).

In Philp and Duchesne’s research, emotional engagement refers to learners’ enthusiasm, interest, enjoyment, and boredom during task completion. In the present study, we used the term “affective engagement” rather than “emotional engagement,” because we believe that emotional engagement provides only a partial picture of its dimension. It is affective engagement that reflects not only learners’ emotions displayed during interaction, but their attitudes and evaluations after task completion (Phung, 2017). These attitudes and evaluations will influence their subsequent performance in tasks of a similar kind, which eventually affect the L2 learning outcome. Following previous studies (Fan and Xu, 2020; Zhang, 2021), we subdivide affective engagement into two components: affect and value. Affect refers to learners’ feelings and emotions displayed during the collaborative feedback activity, whereas value refers to learners’ attitudes toward and evaluation of the value of the collaborative feedback activity.

The effectiveness of collaborative peer feedback has been explained in studies which investigate collaborative dialog and L2 writing through reference to sociocultural theory and process writing theory. Sociocultural SLA researchers claim that the assistance learners provide with one another in peer interaction allows them to jointly achieve what they cannot achieve individually. When learners collaborate with each other, they acquire the target language and writing skills by deliberating about language choices, articulating uncertainties, and providing suggestions (Swain and Lapkin, 1998; Storch, 2002). Process writing theory views writing as a process of meaning-making and knowledge-building rather than a single written product. Peer revision is of paramount importance in this process because it creates “opportunities for them (students) to discover and negotiate meaning, to explore effective ways of expressing meaning, to practice a wide range of language and writing skills, and to assume a more active role in the learning process” (Hu, 2005, p. 322).

Numerous studies have detailed the benefits of collaborative peer feedback in L2 writing, including opportunities for noticing and uptake (De Guerrero and Villamil, 2000; Hyland and Hyland, 2006; Diab, 2010), awareness of text and audience (Tsui and Ng, 2000; Berggren, 2015), and improvement in writing strategies and skills (Liu and Hansen, 2002; Hu, 2005; Min, 2005). They tend to agree that peer revision activities enable learners to focus on the use of the target language and text quality, so that they can make an interpsychological effort to achieve intersubjectivity. Researchers have also identified some features of collaborative peer feedback. When learners read their peer’s writing, they are more likely to attend to the global aspects of language use, such as organization, content information, and cohesion, than local aspects such as vocabulary and grammar (Lundstrom and Baker, 2009; Berggren, 2015). The common strategies they use to provide feedback include the use of L1 and advising and requesting clarification (Villamil and De Guerrero, 1996). To date, L2 writing scholars have pointed out two key factors that may influence students’ performance in feedback activities. First, the social relationship learners form has a direct relationship with their linguistic gains. Researchers have found that a collaborative relationship facilitates language-related discussions among peers while an authoritative stance inhibits productive corrective feedback (Zhu and Mitchell, 2012; Fan and Xu, 2020). Second, student motives play a significant role in guiding their participation in peer feedback. Yu and Lee (2015) found that students’ motives for participating in peer revisions, especially their perceptions about this type of task and previous experience in carrying out the activity, influence and interact with the stance and role relationship they adopt in the task which further impact on their revisions. When they perceive peer feedback as a valuable source of improving L2 writing, they tend to collaborate with fellow students and deliberate over linguistic issues in the text.

In spite of the influx in peer feedback studies, an overwhelming majority looked into the collaborative work between the writer and the feedback giver. Although the dialog between the author and the reviewer allows for direct negotiation, such communication discourages critical comments. A few studies have reported learners’ reluctance to disagree with their peers and criticize their work as a result of face saving in an author-reviewer interaction mode (Nelson and Carson, 1998; Kamimura, 2006). For Asian students, the interpersonal harmony may be more important than offering their peers constructive criticism (Wang, 2014; Chang, 2016). Alshuraidah and Storch (2019) believe that having learners provide feedback in pairs without the presence of the text author would encourage free share of thoughts and comments. More importantly, with both participants endeavoring to give feedback, there would be more active elicitation of reviewer comments. The researchers compared the nature and quality of collaborative peer feedback with that of individual feedback. They found more feedback points in pairs than among individuals. The pairs also provided their peers with more negative comments. In terms of quality, the negative comments contained more constructive suggestions than the positive comments. Alshuraidah and Storch thus argue that collaborative peer feedback creates opportunities for learners to draw on their respective strengths and collectively resolve their uncertainties. It involves questioning, discussing, and explaining to their peers rather than simply making individual decisions. In the interview, the research participants also reported positive attitudes toward collaborative peer feedback, as it guaranteed the appropriateness of their correction. This study offers another approach to operationalize collaborative peer revision.

In the present study, we have the reviewers work collaboratively to give feedback to an anonymous written text by their peer. When comparing the effects of anonymous and identifiable peer feedback on L2 learners’ writing, Zaccaron and Xhafaj (2020) have shown that learners feel more comfortable when giving anonymous peer feedback, because it diminishes their fear of giving too many corrections which may also contain erroneous feedback. On the other hand, although identifiable peer feedback help clarify outstanding feedback issues, it arouses some hostility between authors and reviewers and also among reviewers. The current research aimed to see whether learners can engage in anonymous peer feedback task and its potential in encouraging L2 learning. In addition to learners’ cognitive engagement with the correction and revision process, we also investigated learners’ affective, behavioral, and social engagement in collaborative peer feedback. This multifaceted model allows us to include an emphasis on both attention (the cognitive dimension) and the affective, behavioral, and social dimensions that support effective learning. Specifically, the following research questions guided the current study:

How did the students engage with collaborative peer feedback affectively, behaviorally, cognitively, and socially?

By adapting Philp and Duchesne’s (2016) EWT framework, this study investigated how Chinese EFL learners engaged with a collaborative peer feedback task. It initiated two major research questions. One was the level of learner engagement in anonymous peer revision. The second research question explored the interaction among the different dimensions of learner engagement.

The results revealed that a majority of these intermediate adult learners were actively engaged in the task. Cognitively, the students were able to notice a range of problematic language-related items in their peers’ essays. In opposition to previous findings that intermediate learners usually direct more attention to meaning than form in peer feedback (Lundstrom and Baker, 2009; Berggren, 2015), the students in our study seemed to prioritize meaning or form at random. In the interview, some expressed great concern about the presentation and organization of ideas, whereas others considered vocabulary and grammar as the major weakness in their allocated essay.

Although the dyads differed from one another in terms of the foci of LREs (meaning vs. form), they tended to elaborate on most of the LREs in order to make joint decisions. The finding here lends more support to this format of peer feedback. In comparison to the author-reviewer collaboration in which the reviewer individually decides the language focus and points out the error, collaborative peer feedback allows learners to tentatively initiate their concerns and negotiate with each other to confirm the problem and provide correction, with both members invested in this endeavor. Alshuraidah and Storch (2019) also pointed out the potential weakness of lacking counter-suggestions in traditional peer feedback activities, and thus called for attention to collaborative feedback among reviewers. When we manipulate task design to encourage collaboration and interaction, the ultimate goal is to maximize L2 deliberations, as we tend to believe that two heads are better than one. In this regard, the interaction between/among reviewers has a comparative advantage over the author-reviewer mode of communication.

The results for behavioral engagement indicated that the participants were generally on task. Most of them spent more than 30 min on the task. However, their contribution to the collaborative dialog differed markedly. While some spent their task time sharing thoughts with partners, others preferred to use the time for independent thinking. This finding uncovered two facets underlying behavioral engagement in collaborative activities: engagement with the task and engagement with the dialog. Those who devoted themselves to the task and required additional time for completion showed a high level of task engagement, but they can be disengaged in the communication with their fellow partners. Such behaviors may undermine the benefits that peer collaboration can bring to task success and to individual students. In fact, the dimensions of behavior and social relationship are interwoven here, as learners are more likely to participate in peer interaction when they form a collaborative relationship.

When measuring learners’ social engagement, we counted not only their utterances but their amount of effort to engage with each other’s production. Seven out of 8 pairs were interactive and supportive. They co-constructed the dialog by frequent requests and questions and extension of each other’s talk. Previous studies into L2 writing have detailed how collaborative and expert/novice patterns facilitate the generation of LREs (e.g., Kim and McDonough, 2008; Storch, 2008; Chen and Yu, 2019). In the present study, learners forming a collaborative relationship produced LREs of higher quantity and quality than those employing expert/novice and cooperative patterns. When socially engaged, learners were more willing to unravel complex linguistic issues as they became empowered by their supportive peers. Conversely, learners in a cooperative interaction manner missed many opportunities to negotiate meaning and form with each other. As a result, they turned the collaborative task into an individual one with monologs and individualized decision-making.

In the pair of Jin and Su, Jin’s utter disregard of Su’s invitation for dialog led to Su’s disappointment over collaborative tasks. In the interview, he perceived the task as an inefficient way to revise text. Throughout the task completion process, these emotions and perceptions were intertwined with their role relationship in this dyad. The interaction between social engagement and affective engagement has been demonstrated by a few studies. Some found an impact of social relationships on affective engagement and claimed that low affective engagement undermined interpersonal relationships (Zhang, 2021), while others held that peer exclusion in collaborative dialog can result in negative emotions and deliberate disengagement (Baralt et al., 2016). Philp and Duchesne (2016) even claim that affective engagement is the key to determine the level of social, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. In the current research, we identified not only the interaction between the two dimensions and its effect on behavioral and cognitive engagement, but the joint effect of the two dimensions on learners’ willingness to participate in future tasks. The collaborative and expert/novice pairs all expressed enthusiasm for participating in similar tasks in the future, the cooperative dyad, however, preferred to do this type of task alone. The interviewers also asked members of the cooperative dyad whether they would give it another try by working with a different partner. Both declined. Since it was the first time these students carried out the collaborative peer feedback task, their social experience and attitudes toward this task type may have long-term influence on their L2 learning. From this perspective, the influence of social and affective engagement should not be limited only on the amount of LRE production in a one-off task. Rather, the influence is profound and has far-reaching consequences.

The study, adopting a qualitative approach, advances previous research on peer feedback by drawing on the EWT model of Philp and Duchesne (2016) to examine the cognitive, behavioral, social, and affective dimensions of engagement in a collaborative task. We believe that the EWT framework is better suited to analyze learners’ participation in peer interaction because it recognizes the complexity of peer collaboration, which is not only a way to encourage attention to language but also a source of peer support. In line with previous studies on learner engagement (Baralt et al., 2016; Lambert et al., 2017; Nakamura et al., 2021; Zhang, 2021), the results revealed the interwoven and interdependent nature of the four dimensions. In particular, those who demonstrated high social engagement and perceived benefits of peer collaboration tended to be increasingly engaged with the task in the cognitive and behavioral aspects. By contrast, negative emotions and perceptions of the task and the non-collaborative interaction mode led to a withdrawal from interaction, which, in turn, impeded the identification and resolution of LREs. More importantly, these dimensions interact with each other to shape learners’ task experience which consequently affected their attitudes toward collaborative peer feedback activities and their willingness to participate in subsequent tasks.

These findings suggest that an anonymous collaborative peer feedback activity is able to reduce learner anxiety and encourage reciprocal feedback. Without the presence of the writer, the reviewers can speak their minds more openly and freely. In Alshuraidah and Storch’s (2019) study, the collaborative reviewers provided more negative comments than positive ones, although their personal information was not anonymous. In the present research, we did not identify any positive comments by the 8 pairs. According to previous findings, negative feedback can elicit more critical and constructive feedback and result in a higher uptake rate (van den Bos and Tan, 2019; Zaccaron and Xhafaj, 2020). Therefore, we call for more research into this relatively infant area and more attention to this type of peer feedback as a useful technique in the L2 writing classroom. Moreover, as a small-scale study contextualized in a writing class, the present research also welcomes future research to employ a quantitative approach with more L2 learners and in diverse L2 settings to understand this type of peer feedback for the better.

The results also inform both SLA researchers and education practitioners that learners’ affective and social engagement has long-term influence on L2 teaching and learning. For researchers, longitudinal studies can be conducted to explore whether learners could change their perceptions of the task and role relationship with their partner given more practice. For teachers, learners’ foretaste of a new task will have a cumulative impact on their attendance and engagement in similar tasks. The design and manipulation of the initial task should be carefully considered in order to increase the level of affective and social engagement.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Southeast University. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

WX: data collection, data transcription and analysis, and paper writing. DL: data analysis and paper writing and revising. CL: data analysis and paper revising. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by the National Social Science Funds (Grant No. 21FYYB016), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No.2242021S20025), and Curriculum Reform Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No.5217002131A).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.