Exploring the Impact of Peer Assessment on EFL Students’ Writing Performance

Abstract

Lately, researchers have expressed their concern for EFL students’ poor writing performance and exam failure. They have indicated that peer assessment (PA) can be successfully employed to support a better integration of teaching/instruction with assessment of progress in learning. Bearing this in mind, the current study employed a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design and aimed to explore the effect of PA on 200 Greek Cypriot EFL students’ writing performance. These adolescent learners attended two writing classes per week (90 minutes) for a full school year. Teachers received training in PA skills and then had to train their own students. Students were asked to use a PA rubric which was also devised by the researcher but negotiated between the students and their teachers during the training sessions. Paired T-tests were performed to investigate whether students in the control (n=100 students and 10 teachers) and the experimental groups (n=100 students and 10 teachers) enhanced their writing performance comparing their pre- to post-test scores. The study outcomes indicated that PA could have a moderately positive impact on students’ writing performance. The use of PA improved students’ writing performance in 5 aspects: mechanics, organisation, content, focus, and vocabulary and language use. In response to the need for more experimentation, this study provides recommendations for PA implementation in secondary school EFL writing classes which enable teachers to improve students’ writing performance.