Determinants and accuracy of students’ ratings of their peers’ German and heritage language abilities

Abstract

Models of language acquisition suggest that the development of language abilities is influenced by the language skills of relevant interaction partners (e.g. peers). Because objective measures of interaction partners’ language skills are rarely available, third party ratings may be an alternative measure. Therefore, the present study investigates students’ ratings of their fellow students’ language skills as indicators of actual language performance in German and the heritage languages Turkish and Russian. Multilevel models were applied to address the following questions: Which factors influence students’ ratings of peers’ language skills? How accurate are these ratings and what influences the accuracy of ratings? In all languages, students’ ratings were moderately related to peers’ test performance and the accuracy of ratings was positively moderated if the students had class together, shared the same language background and with increasing relationship quality. The ratings for German language abilities further revealed negative performance related stereotypes towards peers with Turkish and Russian language backgrounds. The results are discussed with respect to possibilities and boundaries of assessing peers’ language skills through student ratings and implications of negative performance related stereotypes.