Interrater Scoring of Public Speaking Performances in English Language Teacher Education Program

Aynur Kesen Mutlu

doi:10.5539/ies.v11n9p12

Abstract

Based on the constructivist learning principles, self-assessment has been a targeted topic for many studies in the field of teacher education. Its importance and its leading to learner empowerment have been discussed for long. This current study in this line tries to move one step further by adding a correlative comparison between instructors’ and students teachers’ grading as well as searching into students’ views on self-assessment in Oral Communication Skills Course at English Language Teaching Department of a private university in Turkey. Interrater consistency was examined throughout the study. This study involves 21 student teachers who assessed their speaking performances five times using a micro-analytic rating scale. In the analysis of data, both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized. Both data sets suggest that there is a high correlation between instructor and student teachers grading. The study has got some implications for curriculum designers, instructors and teacher candidates.

Highlights

Formative assessment methods have recently been voiced in educational context as a result of the mainstream of constructive psychology
Since the aim of this paper is to focus on interrater consistency between students’ self-grades and teacher grades in assessing public speaking performances of student teachers enrolled in the department of English language teaching, related literature comprises studies conducted on teacher assessment and self-assessment in speaking performances of language learners
Findings reveal that there was no difference between weekly comparisons of the teacher and student ratings, which could be attributed to the assessment training or the scale used in the assessment process

Summary

Introduction

Formative assessment methods have recently been voiced in educational context as a result of the mainstream of constructive psychology. In the absence of experience, the problem in self-assessment is the inflated grades given by learners who are unskilled in terms of assessment (Kruger & Dunning, 1999) It is indicated in some studies (Ross, 1998; Ward, Gruppen, & Regehr, 2002) that students’ self-assessment lacked reliability when compared to some external factors one of which is teacher assessment. For this very specific reason, searching into consistencies and inconsistencies between students’ self-assessment and teacher assessment has been one of the popular areas of research in recent years (Barrot, 2015; Ünaldı, 2016; Baleghizadeh & Hajizadeh, 2014)

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Conclusion