The Effects Of Peer-assessment Training On Self-assessment Of EFL Writing

Due to the growing interest in learner-centered learning and learner autonomy,self-assessment has attracted much attention in recent years. Although there have beennumerous research on self-assessment, especially on its validity and reliability, theirresults are not consistent due to the complicated nature of self-assessment. Manyfactors have been identified to influence the effectiveness of self-assessment; amongthem the importance of training has been emphasized. Given that few research hasbeen conducted on how self-assessment could be influenced by specific trainingmethod, the present study aims to investigate whether using peer-assessment as atraining method can improve self-assessment of EFL writing in argumentative essaysof Chinese college students. To be more specific, two research questions areaddressed:1) What is the effect of peer assessment training on students’self-grading?2) What is the effect of peer-assessment training on students’perception of writing?The present study is a one-group pre-/post-test design in which thirty participantsmajored in application of English are involved. In the pre-test, the participants wererequired to self-evaluate their writing task from five aspects: organization, content,grammar, vocabulary and mechanics, using the given rating scale and feedback sheet.After that, they received the peer-assessment training which lasted for three weeks. Inthe post-test, the participants were asked to self-evaluate that writing task again usingthe same assessing instruments.Statistic techniques for quantitative analysis such as one-way ANOVA andcorrelation were employed to examine the participants’ self-evaluation before andafter training while teachers’ assessment was set as the criteria to be compared with.Qualitative analysis was conducted to analyze the results of questionnaire andinterview in order to elicit in-depth information of the training effects on participants’perception of writing.Combining the results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis, it was foundthat: First, the participants were able to self-evaluate the aspects of organization and mechanics with or without receiving training. Second, the participants generally madepositive comments to the effects of peer-assessment training and the training processwas mostly effective in improving students’ self-grading and perception of content.Third, the peer-assessment training has few effects on improving the participants’self-evaluation of grammar and vocabulary for they could not self-evaluate these twoaspects reliably even after training.The results of the present study partly confirms the effects of peer-assessmenttraining on improving students’ self-assessment of writing and provides pedagogicalimplications for EFL writing instruction in Chinese-specific context.