One, Two, ... , Many : The Outcomes of Paired Peer Assessment, Group Peer Assessment, and Teacher Assessment in EFL Writing

Abstract

The learning potential of pair/team work in language assessment has been demonstrated in the literature, albeit with little concern about challenges faced by the educators to implement it. To contribute to this line of research, the present study aimed to investigate the impact of paired peer assessment, teacher feedback, and group peer assessment on students' writing performance. To do so, 69 second-year university students of the English language were assigned to three classes. The first class received regular teacher feedback, the second class was instructed to work in pairs and assess each other's work, and students in the third class were divided into groups of four members and a group leader was assigned to each group by the teacher. Team leaders' responsibility was assessing and providing feedback on their fellow members' writing samples. The results showed a growth in the performance of students in paired peer assessment class in comparison to the other two classes. In group peer assessment class, the group heads outperformed their peers but the overall performance of the class was lower than paired peer assessment class. The findings suggest careful consideration of the circumstances under which peer assessment can be employed and call for more research on the contribution of non-pedagogical factors to assessment designs.

Impact of Peer Feedback on Learning : A Case of EFL Teacher Trainees

“…In a more recent study that compared teacher and peer feedback in a college EFL writing classroom, Park (2018) reported that teacher feedback was more favored and incorporated than peer feedback by the students while they still appreciated peer feedback for its own strength. Babaii and Adeh (2019) also compared teacher feedback and two types of peer feedback in an EFL writing class, finding out the greatest performance in the paired peer feedback group.…”

Implementing Peer Assessment for Optimal Effects : Learners’ Voice

“…This finding is in line with earlier studies that highlighted learners' perception of peers as an important factor in peer assessment (cf. Babaii & Adeh, 2019;Ballantyne, Hughes, & Mylonas, 2002;Brown, Irving, Peterson, & Hirschfeld, 2009;Kaufman & Schunn, 2011;Le Hebel et al, 2018;Strijbos, Narciss, & Dünnebier, 2010). More importantly, the findings from the current study indicate how experience and training can contribute to forming the students' beliefs towards mutual trust and consequent learning benefits.…”

“…Meanwhile, the product of group work was rarely peer-assessed in many of previous PA studies, where pair-work prevailed as the manner of peer assessment, which format is not likely to allow the feedback comments to be shared among all the students in the same classroom. Even when a group work format was employed (e.g., Babaii & Adeh, 2019), the manner was different from in the current study, i.e., only the group leader was given the opportunity to evaluate the members in the group.…”

“…Murillo-Zamorano (2018) compared the effect of teacher-, and peer feedback on the improvement of oral presentations in business-majoring college students and found peer feedback was more effective than teacher feedback. More recently, Babaii and Adeh (2019) reported that the greatest performance of EFL writing was found in the paired peer feedback condition over either teacher feedback-, or group peer feedback condition.…”

Student Conceptions of Assessment: Regulatory Responses to Our Practices

“…Reading of the papers excluded seven papers that were reviews (Brown, 2011;Double et al, 2020;McMillan, 2016McMillan, , 2019Van der Kleij & Lipnevich, 2020;Vogl & Pekrun, 2016, Wise & Smith, 2016, five that had no measure of student perceptions of assessment (Babaii & Adeh, 2019;Chen & Lin, 2020;Gordienko, 2015;Natsis et al, 2018;Taghizadeh & Kazemzadeh, 2019), one…”