Opening Pandora’s Box: How Does Peer Assessment Affect EFL Students’ Writing Quality?

Abstract

Recent research has underlined the benefits of peer assessment (PA) as it helps learners write high-quality essays and increases their confidence as writers. In terms of this intervention study, 200 Greek Cypriot EFL learners’ essays (pre- and post-tests) were evaluated taking into consideration four aspects of writing quality after using either PA and teacher assessment (TA) (experimental groups, n = 100 students) or only TA (control groups, n = 100 students) in their writing classes for one year. This is one of the few studies, to the knowledge of the present researcher, which have performed text analysis of so many aspects of writing quality using such a—relatively—large sample (400 essays) in such a challenging setting (secondary education). Learners’ essays were evaluated in terms of accuracy, fluency, grammatical complexity, and lexical complexity using Atlas.ti. Findings indicated that learners who received PA and TA improved their essays more in terms of lexical complexity, accuracy, and some features of grammatical complexity and fluency than those who received only TA. The current study highlights the desirability of collaborative group work, in the form of PA activities, in the creation of opportunities conducive to promoting writing quality.

Exploring EFL Teachers’ Perceptions of the Use of Peer Assessment in External Exam-Dominated Writing Classes

“…Most instructors thought that PA was a worthwhile experience and that most learners loved it. Teachers stated that their learners had improved their essays considerably in terms of structure, paragraph development, vocabulary and new ideas which was also confirmed by comparing students' marks (Meletiadou 2021a) and their texts taking into consideration various indicators of writing quality (Meletiadou 2021b). However, this does not imply that instructors should opt for students' short-term preparation because EFL learners' PA skills require time and effort to mature (also in Min 2006).…”

“…The participants and their guardians signed a consent form (including ethics approval by the Ministry of Education in Cyprus) and were ensured confidentiality and anonymity (Huertas-Abril et al 2021). Both teachers and students were trained in PA methods and teachers received weekly coaching and mentoring throughout the procedure (one hour per week for the whole school year during school hours) to ensure that they could overcome any challenges they faced (Meletiadou 2021b). Students were involved in the PA procedure twice a week for 90 min.…”

“…The current article aims to add to the prevailing literature related to EFL teachers' attitudes towards PA of writing in secondary education. This paper presents part of the findings of a longitudinal study that explored the impact of PA of writing on secondary school EFL students' writing performance (Meletiadou 2021a), writing quality (Meletiadou 2021b) and attitudes towards writing and learning (Meletiadou 2022). The goal of this article is to address the following research question:…”