Using Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment to Develop Chinese Efl Learners’ Writing

Abstract

Peer feedback is increasingly used in higher education. However, in China, peer feedback is not widely used in EFL writing classes. Distrust of students’ ability to provide comments and teachers’ fear of losing power are two frequently discussed reasons. For the lack of peer feedback, the study used teacher-student collaborative assessment (TSCA), a native classroom assessment proposed by Chinese researchers involving peer feedback supported by teachers, to find how it affects peer feedback quality and EFL writing performance. The study used a quantitative method and conducted a quasi-experiment. In the experimental group, 45 freshmen took TSCA after each writing task, while in the control group, 57 freshmen only received the teacher’s analysis of the writing sample. After the training of five weeks, participants in the experimental group showed significant improvement in the quality of their peer feedback and EFL writing than participants in the control group. Based on the findings, the study proposes a blended TSCA for better adaption to Chinese EFL writing teaching in higher education, i.e., with limited EFL teaching time and a large class. This also shows a middle way to provide feedback from teacher-centered transmission to student-centered process based on the sociocultural context of China.