The Effect of Assessment Type (self vs. peer vs. teacher) on Iranian University EFL Students' Course Achievement
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Volume two, Issue four
October 2012
The Effect of Assessment Type (self vs. peer vs. teacher) on Iranian University EFL Students’ Course Achievement ZAINAB ABOLFAZLI KHONBI & KARIM SADEGHI Urmia University, Iran Bio Data: Zainab Abolfazli Khonbi has an MA in TEFL from Urmia University. She is interested in alternative assessment and language testing. Karim Sadeghi lectures at English Language Department of Urmia University. He has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of East Anglia, UK. His publications have appeared in TESL Canada Journal, Asian EFL Journal, IJAL, TELL, ASIA Pacific Education Researcher, and The Modern Language Journal among others. He is the editor-inchief of Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research. Abstract This research investigated the effect of self-, peer-, and teacherassessment on Iranian undergraduate EFL students’ course achievement. Four intact classes, including 82 students from Urmia, Tabriz, and Tabriz Islamic Azad universities were randomly assigned into one of the self-, peer-, teacher-assessment, or control groups. The students were pretested on their current Teaching Methods knowledge. After receiving relevant instruction and training, the first experimental group (N= 21) were involved in self-assessment activities, the second one (N= 23) were engaged with peer-assessment tasks, and the third one (N= 21) were subjected to teacher-assessment; however, the control group (N= 19) received no assessment-related treatment. The application of ANCOVA on the results of the achievement posttest indicated differences in the performances of peer-, self-, teacherassessment, and the control groups F (3, 77) = 23.15, p= .05, in favour of peer-assessment. A medium effect size was found between the independent and dependent variables (partial eta squared= .47); however, the covariate, albeit significant (.03), had a small effect size (partial eta squared= .05). Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper. Keywords: Alternative assessment; Course achievement; EFL students; Peer-assessment; Self-assessment; Teacher-assessment
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Language Testing in Asia
Volume two, Issue four
October 2012
Introduction In educational systems, assessment is an inevitable ingredient because it may influence learning, and when made authentic it provides feedback and revision to improve learning. Furthermore, through meaningful engagement of students in the learning process, assessment can affect motivation. Assessment would also enhance instruction by helping the teacher recognize students’ weaknesses and strengths. Assessments can also be made valid, fair, ethical, feasible, and efficient tools for learning using multiple measures (Mousavi, 2012). It has been argued that learning how to learn (self-directed learning) would be of utmost importance for language learners for at least three reasons. First, because of the complexity of the task which learning presents, there is never enough time within a formal scheme of instruction to ensure mastery on the part of studen
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