Peer assessment improving writing skills in efl students. Evaluación en pares para mejorar habilidades de escritura en estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera.

Resumen

The following study analyzes peer assessment's impact on improving academic writing skills. Peer assessment allows students to review tasks from other classmates; this is a controlled environment where students can evaluate each other's work to give feedback on each activity, working in class as a learning strategy. This research examines how controlled and structured peer review sessions improve students' ability to write better and develop their writing activities. Participants included two groups of around nine students of the same level but from different classes, who engaged in daily peer assessment activities for over a week. The study uses mixed methods to reach the result, incorporating quantitative analysis of pre-and post-intervention writing scores with qualitative data from a students' survey. The outcome indicates that students who participated in peer assessment demonstrated improvement in organization, paragraph structure, and grammatical accuracy compared to those who only had feedback from their teacher in the classroom. Furthermore, peer assessment helps students learn how to follow a rubric format. However, there were some challenges, such as mistrusting the criteria of other peers and the need for positive feedback. This research concludes with recommendations for adding peer assessment into curriculum design so that teachers feel encouraged to let students explore this learning skill in class. By making students think outside of the box and changing the aim from a centric class focus on the teacher to a more collaborative one, peer assessment is a tool that can lead to better learning.