Characteristics and user acceptance of peer rating in EFL writing classrooms

Abstract

Lack of research on the characteristics of peer assessment in E FL writing may inh ibit teachers from appreciating the utility of this inno vative assessment. This study addr essed the followin g research questions: (1) H ow similar are peer, self-and teacher ratings of E FL writing?; (2) D o students favour peer ratings?; and (3) D oes peer feedb ack influence students' attitudes about peer rating? Forty-seven college students stud ying E nglish writing in a Japanese college were assigned to write two essays. E ach essay was commented on and rated by two teachers, three peers and the writers themselves. Stude nts also completed a five-item qu estionnaire about their attitud es regarding peer rating. Peer and teacher ratings were found to correlate significantly. The results of the question naire indicated that students had favou rable attitudes towards peer rating. A regression analysis suggested that peer feedback did not influ ence stud ents' favour able attitud es abo ut the feedb ack. I IntroductionG rowing inte rest in the use of alternative assessment in the foreign and second language le arning (F/SL) field seems to have stim ula ted publication of resource books (Brown, 1998; O 'Malley and Valdez Pierce, 1996) and a collection of research papers (E kbatani and Pierson, 2000) on this topic. These books give a wide array of examples and offer valuable advice for language teachers employing alternative assessments in an everyday class. E choing this trend, the number of stu dies on peer review and portfolio assessm ent in F/SL writin g has swelled rapidly. In general these stu dies support the benefits of using peer review as an aid in © Arnold 2004 10.1191/1362168804lr133oa A ddress for correspondence: H idetoshi Saito, Hokusei G akuen U niversity, D epartment of E conomics, 2-3-1 O yachi-nishi, A tusbetsuku, Sapporo 004-8631 Japan; e-mail: saitoh@ hokusei.ac.jp L anguage Teaching R esearch 8,1 (2004); pp. 31-54 revision of F/SL writin g. Most studies, however, have not utilize d peer rating; rather they have focused on how much and what kind of peer comments or teachers' comments were incorporated into students' further revision (e.g., Connor and A senavage, 1994; Villamil and D e G uerrero, 1998). A few major differences in the two areas of writing research involving peers should be clarified at the outset. First, while the so-called peer review studies qualita tively analyse peer comments, the studies on peer rating of writin g employ rating scales of some kind, thus producing quantitative data. Secondly, peer review is not necessarily undertaken for use in assessm ent, while peer rating is intended for assessment. In other words, studies of peer review and peer ratin g differ in respect to research purposes and methods, although some overla p does exist.In contrast with the increasing number of studies concerning peer review in L2 writing, research on peer ratin g remains unexamined. Little is known about the characteristics of peer assessment as well as student reaction to this practice, altho...

The Relationship between the Accuracy of Self- and Peer-assessment of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners and Their Learning Styles

“…This is in line with the studies of AlFallay (2004), Patri (2002), and Saito and Fujita (2004) who reported the high coefficients between teacher-assessment and peer-assessment (r= .92, .85, and .72, respectively). In general, all correlations obtained in this study were significant and relatively high (ranged .55 to .87).…”

“…Although the unreliability of self-and peer-assessment limits some teachers to use them only for developmental purposes (Saito & Fujita, 2004), one should keep in mind that even experienced teachers are not always reliable markers and so it seems unreasonable to expect inexperienced students always to demonstrate reliability (Falchikov & Boud, 1989). This means that the limitations should not downgrade the pedagogical values of self-assessment and peer-assessment in language education.…”

“…are also examined as factors affecting the self-and peerassessment accuracy. Saito and Fujita (2004), for instance, conducted a study on the comparison among peer-, self-, and teacher-assessment of L2 writing products in a Japanese context and reported a striking similarity between peerassessment and teacher-assessment. About rater severity, results of this study showed that the group of self-raters included both the most lenient and severest raters.…”

Adoptability of Peer Assessment in ESL Classroom

“…On the other hand, some studies have shown that peer assessment is interrelated with instructor assessment (Jafarpur, 1991;Patri, 2002;Saito & Fujita, 2004). Saito (2008) proved that training could improve the quality of peer assessment.…”

Student-Graded Oral Presentations

“…[2,3]). Both self and peer assessment can be used to assess writing [4,5,6,7,8] as well as presentations [9].…”