Self- vs. Peer-editing: One Step Forward from Assessment to Building EFL Students’ Writing Skill

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Fatemeh Behjat ¹ , Mortaza Yamini ²

1 - Aabdeh Azad University
2 - Shiraz University

Received: 2011-04-09 Accepted : 2011-10-09 Published : 2011-01-01

Keywords: Peer-Editing, self-editing, communicative writing, indirect method for assessing writing,

Abstract :

A number of pedagogical arguments support self- and peer-assessment in language classrooms to improve the quality of learning by students’ involvement in the final judgments of one’s work. Considering editing as a method of communicative testing of writing, this study aimed at finding out whether self- and peer-editing of assignments could result in the improvement in Iranian EFL students’ writing skill. For this purpose, 90 sophomore English students at Shiraz Islamic Azad University were selected and assigned a topic to write about as the pre-test. The participants were then divided into two groups and trained for assessing writing. While in the first group, the participants rated their own writings, in the second, they were asked to correct their peers’ writings. The participants then wrote a paragraph on a topic as the post-test. The result of a two-way ANOVA for the comparison between the participants’ performance in the pre- and post-tests revealed an improvement in the students’ writing ability, and there was no significant difference between the performances of the two groups implying that self- and peer-assessment can help the EFL learners equally to improve their writing.