Abstract
This study reports a research project which compared teacher and peer assessment of English university students’ compositions. In addition, it investigated possible friendship bias in peer assessment as well as the impacts of this practice on learners’ attitudes towards it. To this aim, a total of 38 university students of English who were passing their writing course took a proficiency test and filled in a pre-questionnaire. Afterwards, training and practice sessions on using Jacobs et al.’s composition profile followed. The actual peer assessment of compositions, teacher assessment, and administration of a post-questionnaire were the subsequent practices employed respectively. To analyze the collected data from the 26 subjects who participated in all parts of the study paired-sample t-tests and chi square were applied. The results revealed no significant difference between the learners’ peer assessment and teacher assessment. No friendship bias was found in peer assessment, but this practice led to the change of students’ attitudes towards a positive perception on peer assessment.
Highlights
Alternative assessment asks students to show what they can do, that is to say, students are evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they are able to recall (Macias, 1995, cited in Coombe et al, 2007)
The study Given the importance of peer assessment and its impacts on language skills and considering the students' attitude towards it, the main research questions were formally stated as follow: 1. How similar are teacher and peer ratings of students' English compositions? 2
For the peers in general, the results, t = .827, P = .416 > .05, indicated that there was no significant difference between the teacher and friend and non-friend peer corrections/ ratings, and the mean scores for corrections were quite close to each other (Table 1)
Summary
Alternative assessment asks students to show what they can do, that is to say, students are evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they are able to recall (Macias, 1995, cited in Coombe et al, 2007). They specify that teachers play a major role in traditional pen and paper and performance assessment, whereas self and peer assessments are more studentcentered They allow students to participate in the evaluation and provide opportunities for observation and modeling which help them scrutinize themselves and adjust their performance. Peer assessment in writing Peer evaluation plays an important role in both first (L1) and second language (L2) writing classrooms, and allows writing teachers to help their students receive more feedback on their papers as well as give students practice with a range of skills important in the development of language and writing ability, such as meaningful interaction with peers, a greater exposure to ideas, and new perspectives on the writing process. Peer review sessions can teach students important writing skills, such as writing to a real audience seeing ideas and points of view other than their own (Paulus, 1999), and discussing how to revise writing effectively
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