The Impact of Negotiation as a Social Practice on EFL Writing Peer Assessment Sessions

Abstract

This qualitative study aims to investigate the negotiation technique that EFL students employ in EFL writing peer assessment sessions. As a data collection instrument, a close-observation has been used for (n=20) participants randomly selected from an intermediate school in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of using observation is to shed light on the students' negotiation of peer assessment practices in writing class and how they work collaboratively in order to discuss their writing prompts more effectively. The findings of the study showed that students’ negotiations skills impacted improvements of the writing skill positively. Moreover, negotiations and discussions have actively engaged students into effective collaborative learning and considerably increased their participation and language practice in their peer assessment sessions.

Formative assessment in K-12 English as a foreign language education: A systematic review

“…Three studies adopted peer assessment in EFL classes in different environments, including a classroom that used spherical video-based virtual reality [ 42 ], a classroom focused on group-oriented activities [ 43 ] and a classroom where writing was approached as a social practice through negotiation [ 44 ]. All studies showed a positive relation between peer assessment and EFL learning, even in different aspects such as oral and lexical skills [ 43 ], writing skills and collaborative learning [ 41 ] and English-speaking performance [ 42 ].…”

“…Self-assessment, peer assessments, feedback, portfolios and other tools considerably impact second language learners' performance, motivation and self-regulation abilities. Evidence from the literature indicates that peer assessment and self-assessment can improve students' critical thinking skills, learning performance and motivation while reducing English learning anxiety in different contexts, for example, in classrooms utilising spherical video-based virtual reality [ 42 ], in a group-oriented speaking and vocabulary class [ 43 ], in negotiation as a social practice in a writing class [ 44 ] and the 4/3/2 technique in an English-speaking class [ 20 ]. These findings suggest that appropriate techniques should be selected based on specific learning contexts.…”