AWEJ Volume.3 Number 4, 2012 pp. 268 – 274
Instructor and Peer Evaluation of Oral Skills in English Speech Class
Pi-Ying Hsu
Department of Applied Foreign Languages
Chaoyang University of Technology,
Taiwan
Abstract
Peer Evaluation is recognized as having significant pedagogic value and has gained much attention in recent years due to the increasing emphasis on learner self-regulation. Instructors in a number of universities have tried out peer evaluation in collaborative team projects to evaluate student contributions to both process and task. This current study was designed to investigate if the college students were competent in evaluating their peers’ oral performance alongside their instructor in English Speech class. Ninety-eight junior English majors enrolled in English Speech courses were recruited to participate in this study. Some statistical analyses were employed. The researcher first compared the means and standard deviations of the instructor and peer evaluations to determine the levels of agreement between the two sets of marks of the individual speech. Then, independent t-tests were conducted to examine if there were any significant differences between the instructor and peer evaluation of English speech performance. Finally, the Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to test the relationship between instructor- and peer-evaluation. The results revealed that the peer evaluation was similar to the instructor’s assessment. Students’ competencies in peer evaluation appear to be independent on the oral performance. This study provides prelimary evidence that the instructor’s evaluation can be supplemented with peer evaluation in the classroom setting.
Keywords: Peer evaluation, Oral skills, English Speech