PEER AND TEACHER ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING: PROCEDURE AND CORRESPONDENCE

Abstract

This paper reports on the assessment procedure of students’ academic essays at an undergraduate course in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a business-oriented university during the school year 2020/21. Following the social constructivism paradigm (e.g. Vygotsky, 1962), the procedure employed peer assessment (PA) and teacher assessment (TA) of students’ academic essays and was aimed at improving their essay writing performance. The paper further reports on the degree of correspondence between the grades awarded by teachers and peer assessors on a set of assessment criteria to investigate the potential of PA as a (a) learning tool and as a (b) supplementary assessment tool. Lower correlation and higher difference between mean grades awarded by teachers and peers on some of the assessment criteria may indicate the essay writing aspects students are weakest at. The results also implicate that certain adjustments in the assessment procedure need to be made in future iterations of the course, particularly with regard to assessment training, defining assessment criteria, and pairing multiple peer raters with a single teacher rater, as these changes may not only improve the benefits PA can bring, but also contribute to its validity.