Abstract
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.
Highlights
Peer assessment (PA), as a formative type of ‘assessment for learning’ which fosters student-centred evaluation, has been widely discussed (Lee and Hannafin 2016; Panadero et al 2016; Wanner and Palmer 2018)
The present study investigated the kind of impact that PA—when used in combination with teacher assessment (TA)—may have on the writing quality of students” essays by analysing their texts
One-way MANOVA was performed to explore whether the use of PA and TA had any impact, which was statistically significant, on the writing quality of students’ essays as regards its four indicators, i.e., accuracy, lexical complexity, grammatical complexity, and fluency (Table 1)
Summary
Peer assessment (PA), as a formative type of ‘assessment for learning’ which fosters student-centred evaluation, has been widely discussed (Lee and Hannafin 2016; Panadero et al 2016; Wanner and Palmer 2018). PA is a valuable ‘learning how to learn’ technique (Li et al 2012) due to its positive impact on motivation and involvement in learning of students regardless of their age (Reinholz 2016; Tenorio et al 2016). It supports students as they become accountable for their learning empowering each other’s achievements through peer response and evaluation (Tillema et al 2011). The process of PA, which promotes learner-centred assessment, cannot be implemented in EFL classes unless more detailed description of this approach especially in terms of preparing adolescent students and their EFL teachers becomes available (Lam 2016). PA is related with unclear and obscure language and is not implemented or perceived in terms of teaching secondary school learners (Harris et al 2015)
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