scholarly journals Opening Pandora’s Box: How Does Peer Assessment Affect EFL Students’ Writing Quality?

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Eleni Meletiadou

Recent research has underlined the benefits of peer assessment (PA) as it helps learners write high-quality essays and increases their confidence as writers. In terms of this intervention study, 200 Greek Cypriot EFL learners’ essays (pre- and post-tests) were evaluated taking into consideration four aspects of writing quality after using either PA and teacher assessment (TA) (experimental groups, n = 100 students) or only TA (control groups, n = 100 students) in their writing classes for one year. This is one of the few studies, to the knowledge of the present researcher, which have performed text analysis of so many aspects of writing quality using such a—relatively—large sample (400 essays) in such a challenging setting (secondary education). Learners’ essays were evaluated in terms of accuracy, fluency, grammatical complexity, and lexical complexity using Atlas.ti. Findings indicated that learners who received PA and TA improved their essays more in terms of lexical complexity, accuracy, and some features of grammatical complexity and fluency than those who received only TA. The current study highlights the desirability of collaborative group work, in the form of PA activities, in the creation of opportunities conducive to promoting writing quality.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Eleni Meletiadou

Lately, researchers have expressed their concern for EFL students’ poor writing performance and exam failure. They have indicated that peer assessment (PA) can be successfully employed to support a better integration of teaching/instruction with assessment of progress in learning. Bearing this in mind, the current study employed a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design and aimed to explore the effect of PA on 200 Greek Cypriot EFL students’ writing performance. These adolescent learners attended two writing classes per week (90 minutes) for a full school year. Teachers received training in PA skills and then had to train their own students. Students were asked to use a PA rubric which was also devised by the researcher but negotiated between the students and their teachers during the training sessions. Paired T-tests were performed to investigate whether students in the control (n=100 students and 10 teachers) and the experimental groups (n=100 students and 10 teachers) enhanced their writing performance comparing their pre- to post-test scores. The study outcomes indicated that PA could have a moderately positive impact on students’ writing performance. The use of PA improved students’ writing performance in 5 aspects: mechanics, organisation, content, focus, and vocabulary and language use. In response to the need for more experimentation, this study provides recommendations for PA implementation in secondary school EFL writing classes which enable teachers to improve students’ writing performance.


Author(s):  
Amir Rezaei ◽  
Khaled Barkaoui

Abstract This study aimed to compare second-language (L2) students’ ratings of their peers’ essays on multiple criteria with those of their teachers’ under different assessment conditions. Forty EFL teachers and 40 EFL students took part in the study. They each rated one essay on five criteria twice, under high-stakes and low-stakes assessment conditions. Multifaceted Rasch Analysis and correlation analyses were conducted to compare rater severity and consistency across rater groups, rating criteria and assessment conditions. The results revealed that there was more variation in students’ ratings than the teachers’ across assessment conditions. Additionally, both rater groups had different degrees of severity in assessing different criteria. In general, students were significantly more severe on language use than were teachers; whereas teachers were significantly more severe than were peers on organization. Student and teacher severity also varied across rating criteria and assessment conditions. The findings of this study have implications for planning and implementing peer assessment in the L2 writing classroom as well as for future research.


Author(s):  
Kyoko Baba ◽  
Ryo Nitta

The longitudinal effects of repeating a timed writing activity on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ second language (L2) writing development were investigated. Data for 46 students in two university classes (23 in each class), each with a different course objective, were collected 30 times in the same way over one year. The students’ compositions were analyzed for fluency, grammatical complexity, and lexical complexity. Text analysis using Coh-Metrix showed that task repetition had an overall effect on L2 writing development. The text analysis was supplemented with a visual analysis using moving min-max graphs. Grammatical complexity developed more prominently than the other aspects of writing in both classes. This counter-predictive result points to the significance of the writers’ reflective consciousness towards their own writing. This study also emphasizes that it is important to study the dynamics in L2 writing development with multi-wave data.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Reza Iraji ◽  
Mostafa Janebi Enayat ◽  
Mahyar Momeni

Alternative assessments have increasingly gained attention in L2 writing. One of the areas of research which has received much attention in the literature of ELT is the use of self- and peer-assessments and their effects on developing the writing ability of ESL/EFL learners. The purpose of this study was to find the effect of self- and peer-assessments on the argumentative writing performance of intermediate Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, 36 intermediate EFL students were selected and homogenized based on the results of Oxford Quick Placement Test and an argumentative writing which served as the pre-test of this study. They were then randomly assigned into control and experimental groups to receive different treatments. The compositions of participants in the control group were assessed using traditional teacher-assessment while for the experimental group, self- and peer-assessments were used writing assessment. The results of post-test indicated that the use of self- and peer-assessments significantly affected the writing ability of the learners. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that using alternative assessments for Iranian EFL students could be helpful in overcoming some of their argumentative writing difficulties. The results of this study have clear implications for both learners and teachers and other stakeholders of ELT. They can use these alternative assessments as a learning opportunity to lower the anxiety and improve the argumentative writing skill of the students. s, but they were permanently different in illocutionary acts. Finally, in terms of perlocutionary acts, the candidates were mostly intended to get the hearers know by their assertion, explanation, clarification, argumentation, etc.


2012 ◽  
pp. 407-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alnufaie ◽  
Michael Grenfell

This study was part of a PhD research to explore the writing strategies of 121 second-year undergraduate Saudi student writers who are studying English as a foreign language and for specific purposes in one of the Saudi industrial colleges: Jubail Industrial College (JIC). The writing strategies under investigation had been classified into two categories (process-oriented writing strategies and product-oriented writing strategies) based on their instructional philosophies. A strategy questionnaire was designed to collect data. Although JIC writing classes were assumed to be product-oriented as reported by the majority of the participants’ description of their teachers’ writing approach, the results showed that almost all of the participants (95.9%) were mixing the two kinds of strategies. More surprisingly, the top five writing strategies used by the participants were process-oriented.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Naima Hamlaoui ◽  
Sarra Fellahi

Based on the value of teacher-student conferencing practice in writing classes, the study investigates the role of this practice in improving grammatical accuracy in EFL university students’ writing. One particular aim of this study is to help second-year students at Sétif 2 University (Algeria) reduce subject-verb (S-V) disagreement and run-ons in their writing. Ten students took part in this study; they wrote 120 drafts, and were provided with teacher’s oral feedback on their written compositions at the editing stage. Corpora of students’ compositions were examined and instances of errors were counted before each conferencing session for four weeks. The findings reveal that the participants successfully show progress in grammatical accuracy over time to reach elimination for Subject-Verb disagreements and a significant reduction for run-ons.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachmi Nurhardini

AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh penerapan self dan peer assessment dalam metode diskusi kelompok pada materi ekosistem terhadap: (1) berpikir aplikatif dan (2) berpikir kritis siswa di SMA Negeri 2 Magelang. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian eksperimen semu dengan rancangan pretest-postest with nonequivalent control group design. Populasi adalah siswa kelas X IPA SMA Negeri 2 Magelang. Sampel  ditentukan menggunakan teknik cluster sampling. Kelompok eksperimen diberi perlakuan penerapan self dan peer assessment, kelompok kontrol diberi penilaian guru. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah tes, self dan peer assessment, wawancara serta observasi. Data dianalisis dengan ANCOVA. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa (1) penerapan self dan peer assessment dalam metode diskusi kelompok pada materi ekosistem tidak berpengaruh secara  signifikan terhadap berpikir aplikatif, dan (2) penerapan self dan peer assessment dalam metode diskusi kelompok pada materi ekosistem berpengaruh positif terhadap berpikir kritis.Kata Kunci:  self dan peer assessment, berpikir aplikatif dan berpikir kritis THE EFFECT OF SELF AND PEER ASSESSMENT ON ECOSYSTEM MATERIAL ON THE APPLICATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKING OF STUDENT OF STATE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL  AbstractThis study aims to know the effect of self and peer assessment application in group discussion method on ecosystem material on: (1) the applicative thinking  and (2) the critical thinking of the students of State Senior High School 2 in Magelang. This research was a quasi experiment using the pretest-posttest with non-equivalent group design. The population comprised class X science students of X State Senior High School 2 in Magelang. A sample was established using the cluster random sampling technique. The two classes were assigned as an experimental group and control group. The students of the experimental group were taught using the self and peer assessment application, and the students in the control group were taught using the teacher assessment. The data were collected through a test, self and peer assessment, interview, and observation technique. The data were analyzed by ANCOVA. The results of the study show that (1) self and peer assessment application in group discussion about ecosystem materials does not significantly affect the students’ applicative thinking and (2) self and peer assessment application in group discussion about ecosystem materials significantly affects the students’ critical thinking.Keywords: Self and peer assessment, application thinking and critical thinking


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document