【Teaching Practice Report】

Unlocking Peer and Self-Assessment: A Guided Feedback
Activity
Deborah Maxfield
Abstract
Recent EFL research has indicated the advantages of providing students with opportunities for self-assessment or
peer feedback in addition to teacher feedback (Choi, 2013; Rodriguez-Gonzalez & Castaneda, 2018; Al Jahromi,2020). This practical teaching report will cover use of a classroom activity designed to encourage interactive peer
feedback and productive self-assessments via Google Forms. This activity was developed in line with relevant
literature on peer feedback and self-assessment,

which suggests several benefits of offering students theopportunity for these alternative forms of feedback. In line with recommendations from previous research, theactivity utilizes both closed and open questions geared towards setting specific goals and developing reflective andevaluative skills; this combination can guide students towards producing more meaningful and constructive
feedback, hence boosting their future performance. This tool allows either real-time or asynchronous feedback to
be provided in online or face-to-face lessons, which might be particularly useful for teachers working in various
environments. Although the example questions provided were designed for use within a first-year university
English Presentation course, the basic structure of the activity could be readily adapted to suit a range of speaking
or writing courses.
Keywords: peer feedback, L2 feedback, self-assessment, self-assessment online

Introduction
Formative feedback
Feedback is essential within the classroom: it provides information to students on aspects ofperformance that can be improved upon in the future, and reciprocal feedback between teachers andstudents can significantly improve both learner and teacher performance (Klimova, 2015). Feedback
can be summative or formative; summative feedback evaluates learning and tends to occur at the endof a course or class, whereas formative feedback occurs during the course and aims to set learning
targets to improve performance efficiently and expediently(Taras, 2005; Conzemius & O’Neill, 2009).
In their seminal meta-analysis on feedback and goal setting, Black and Wiliam (1998) state thatformative feedback has three essential elements: “recognition of the desired goal, evidence about
present position, and some understanding of a way to close the gap between the two” (p. 6). Formative
feedback is therefore constructive and future-focused, as to make improvements in the future,
students need to know both how they are progressing (Sadler, 1989) and gain specific advice on ways
to ‘close the gap’ by improving particular aspects of their work (Black & Wiliam, 2010). This process
can be motivating, as well as sustain or develop performance (Klimova, 2015). In contrast to
summative feedback, formative feedback provides more frequent opportunities to comment on
progress by sampling a wider variety of student work, and may reduce learner anxiety (Sadler, 1989,
p. 141). Formative feedback can be delivered via teachers or peers, or come from students themselves
via self-assessment (Al Jahromi, 2020). This paper will further explore each type of formative
feedback before detailing an activity designed in accordance with these principles.
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Teacher feedback
Traditionally, feedback on how to close the gap has passed from teachers to students in what
could be termed a teacher-centred approach. Several studies indicate that students in L2 learning
environments show a preference for feedback from teachers over that of peers (Tsui & Ng, 2000;
Yang et al., 2006; Choi, 2013), and that teacher-centred feedback is more often incorporated into
student work (Yang et al., 2006)I In line with these findings, feedback from teachers arguably has animportant role to play in the classroom as they possess greater tacit evaluative knowledge (Sadler,1989), for instance for assigning grades.
However, it can be hard for teachers to assess examples of work in isolation, and hence, there isa “tendency to use a normative rather than a criterion approach, which emphasizes competition
between pupils rather than the personal improvement of each” (Black & Wiliam, 1998, p. 18). This isbecause teachers might struggle to provide personalized feedback to each student, particularly inlarger classes. Further problems with teacher feedback could include students failing to grasp how
to close the gap because of difficulties with L2 comprehension, and it presents fewer opportunities
for student autonomy in goal setting (Yang et al., 2006). However, teachers can open two alternative
avenues for feedback, which offer benefits to learners by developing students’ evaluative capacities
via self- assessment and by encouraging classmates to collaborate via peer feedback (Black &Wiliam, 1998).

Peer feedback
Regardless of the type of feedback received, Sadler (1989) writes that before students canimprove upon their previous performance, the first step they must make is to“develop the capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during actual production. This inturn requires that students possess an appreciation of what high quality work is... and that they
develop a store of tactics or moves which can be drawn upon to modify their own work... theseskills can be developed by providing direct authentic evaluative experience for students” (p.
119).
Giving opportunities for students to engage in peer feedback provides the ”direct and authentic”
experience needed for students to develop their evaluative knowledge, and therefore, through theprocess of peer feedback, students can both gain and apply strategies or tactics to improve their own
work in future by helping other students to improve theirs (Sadler, 1989, p. 140). In the same article,
Sadler provides further advantages, such that students can see more examples of work on the sametask they had undertaken, can observe multiple designs or solutions to problems, and can besomewhat more objective when evaluating others’ work than they would be of their own.
In their in-depth study on peer feedback in L2 writing classes, Tsui and Ng (2002) noted
numerous benefits for students, including greater collaborative learning, an increased sense ofaudience and authenticity regarding their own work, better understanding of what contributes to“success” on a task, and higher awareness of problems that reviewers could not previously spot intheir own work. The authors concluded that this awareness was gained “not only through getting
feedback but by giving feedback to peers as well” (p. 166), underlining the importance of peer
feedback for future success. Black and Wiliams (2010) found that peer feedback best improved
learning when specific strengths and weaknesses were listed and when this advice was offeredwithout marks or scores from peers. Yang et al. (2006) concluded that in most cases where peer
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feedback was offered, students could receive more feedback than they would have if only teacher
feedback had been provided, and that the process of peer reviewing appeared to boost both criticalthinking skills and student autonomy. Finally, peer feedback has been shown to reduce L2 anxiety(Choi, 2013; Rodriguez-Gonzalez & Castaneda, 2018) and encourage or motivate learners (Rollinson,2005).
However, peer feedback could be vulnerable to issues with L2 language competence that may
result in vague comments (Rodriguez-Gonzalez & Castaneda, 2018). Students may also lack taskbased knowledge needed for effective peer response (Zhu, 1995) and might require guidance on
what constitutes appropriate peer feedback. Zhu (1995) described successful peer response groups
as being “task-focused” and providing specific and accurate feedback; however, when training wasprovided for students in feedback skills, it significantly enhanced the quality of peer response. One
method of training students recommended by Rollinson (2005) is to pre-teach the purpose andmethods of effective peer feedback and to emphasize that peers should focus on being collaborators
rather than correctors.
Other guidelines for generating effective peer feedback include creating a comfortable learning
environment, preparing appropriate peer response tasks that guide students towards providing better
responses, modeling the process and instructions, and allowing students to discuss the activity
afterwards (Hansen & Liu, 2005). Cho and Cho (2011) suggest that providing a combination ofstrengths and weaknesses (i.e., praise and constructive feedback) has been found to help both thereviewer and reviewee to improve their work in future and that reviewers offering positive comments
alone did not improve the quality of work (p. 639). Students in some cultures which particularly
emphasize the value of harmony in relationships might feel anxious about criticizing others’
performance; however, within a Japanese EFL context, Kamimura (2006) found harmony promoted
rather than hindered peer feedback.

Self-assessment
Sadler (1989) argues that formative assessment on how learners can “close the gap” can include
both feedback provided externally to the learner (such as that from teachers or peers) and selfmonitoring, by which the learner generates the relevant information themselves (p. 122). Selfassessment refers to learners making judgements about their own abilities (Brantmeier, 2006), suchas independently evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their own work. Self-assessment was
found by Black and Wiliams (1998) to significantly increase students’ commitment to their own work,and this statement was taken further in a later paper that claimed “self-assessment by pupils, far frombeing a luxury, is in fact an essential component of formative assessment” (Black & Wiliams, 2010,
p.6).
However, students cannot assess their own work without evaluative knowledge or guidelines on
how to do so effectively. For self-monitoring to be successful, students need criteria, standards, orgoals (Taras, 2005) which allow them to adequately judge the quality of their own work, and theyshould be able to choose various strategies on how to improve their performance in future (Sadler,1989). By allowing students the opportunity to self-monitor, setting criteria to judge themselves by,
and offering various strategies for improvement, teachers are effectively downloading their evaluativeknowledge so that students can “eventually become independent of the teacher and intelligently
engage in and monitor their own development” (Sadler, 1989, p. 141), which enables students tocontinue learning and utilizing the taught skills beyond and after the course. A further benefit of self35

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assessment is that it can develop critical thinking skills as students evaluate their own learning andexperiences (Klimova, 2015).
In sum, while teacher feedback is valued by students and is arguably the most suitable forassigning grades or offering summative assessments (Sadler, 1989), alternative forms of formative
feedback can offer numerous advantages to learners. These include gaining awareness of what isrequired for successful achievement of a task and assembling a range of strategies to close the gap,
as well as increased autonomy and reduced L2 anxiety. However, students require some guidance ortraining for either peer feedback or self-assessment to be successful. With these principals andarguments in mind, an activity was designed to guide students toward producing effective peer
feedback and self-assessment.

MethodThe activity has been trialed in several English Presentation classes in two semesters at Rikkyo
University, Tokyo, and has been undertaken in online and face-to-face L2 learning environments.
Students were provided with a Google Form, on which a series of questions invited them to consider
both their own and other team members’ presentations.
First, students were shown a preview of the Google Form. This ensured they knew where to findit (for instance, on the class Google Drive folder) and allowed them to see what topics they would
need to write about after delivering and watching presentations. Short instructions or prompts suchas “What did you / your team do well? What can you / your team improve? Take notes” were written on
the whiteboard while the students watched presentations..” These acted as reminders for students tofocus on their own and others’ work, to include both positive and negative aspects, and to take notes
to enable students to recall these in detail later. Students performed the activity as soon as theyfinished giving presentations and aimed to complete it during class time in order to better remember
the presentations they had seen; however, this could easily be adapted as a homework task depending
on teacher preference and time limitations.
As written peer feedback is more effective when supplemented by discussions between
reviewers (Tsui & Ng, 2000), students were often given time afterward to read classmates’ responses
and discuss their ideas. These discussions could take place in the same class; a possible alternative
for students is to read the comments as a homework task, then discuss them during the following
lesson. Discussion of peer comments allowed students to collaboratively ascertain meaning if
language use was unclear or to gather more details. For lower-proficiency groups, allowing this
discussion to take place in their L1 might also benefit them.
Alternatively, or in addition to peer review discussions, instructors could show the results to theclass as a whole and highlight interesting examples or recurring patterns, for instance ‘many people
mentioned they had found making eye contact difficult in their own presentations’. This could
provide a good opportunity to teach extra skills or to review previously learned information in order
to benefit students that had found these aspects difficult.

Discussion
Open and closed questions
The activity used a series of questions that invited students to evaluate both their own and other36

UNLOCKING PEER AND SELF-ASSESSMENT: A GUIDED FEEDBACK ACTIVITY

team members’ presentations. Various question types were utilized, including short answer, multiple
choice, and scales. Closed questions guided students towards providing feedback on specific points,
and open questions allowed for greater self-expression or explanation of their choices. A few
examples of these designed for use in an English Presentation course will be provided as follows,
although it may be worth noting that these can be adapted for use in other courses, including L1
writing courses, and could be offered in either students’ L1 or L2.
Table 1
Some commonly used questions and instructions

OpenquestionsThink about a team member’s presentation. What was the most interesting part?
Which person in your team gave the best presentation today? Why did you think it was good ? ..
Your answer will be more helpful if you give detailed information (not “it was great!”... explain why)
Give one piece of advice to someone in your team - what can they improve? (For example: “Yuka - I
liked your topic, but it was sometimes difficult to understand because you spoke too quickly. Try to
speak slower next time”)
What do you think was good about your presentation?

Closedquestions

Did your team members...
Use phrases from p. 19? Use gestures? Look at the audience? Speak loud and clear? Show
research? Give interesting information?
What do you think is difficult about giving a presentation?
Choose 1–3 of the following:
Making eye contact, remembering my speech, making slides on PowerPoint, choosing a topic,planning and research, speaking clearly, using gestures
Figure 1
Example of a ‘checkbox grid’ (closed) question using
a difficulty scale37

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Figure 2
Examples of a multiple choice (closed) and short answer(open) question types

As students might benefit from training to gain the evaluative skills necessary for successful
peer- or self-assessment (Hansen & Liu, 2005), closed questions aimed to draw students’ attention tocogent, specific features of the presentations, which were listed as various options in multiple choice,ranking, or checkbox questions. Fixed criteria were used here to “narrow the choices of specificitems which are considered important and relevant for any specific judgement” (Taras, 2005, p. 467),
and they were often used before open questions that offered opportunities to expand upon theseselections or decide on the specific items to be used in goal setting.

Praise and points to work on
As providing praise alone does not lead to effective improvements in student work (Cho & Cho,2011), it was expected that a balance of positive and constructive comments would be more effective.
Therefore, questions were structured to encourage both complimentary and critical feedback, suchas “what did your team member/s do well?” and “what can they improve?”.
It is conceivable that some students may feel nervous about criticizing another’s work, so an
example of a politely phrased comment that started on a positive note but then gave a specificrecommendation for improvement (for instance, “Yuka- I liked your topic, but it was sometimes difficult
to understand because you spoke too quickly. Try to speak slower next time”) was provided to model how
to phrase feedback without being cruel or overly negative. Based on recommendations by Rollinson(2005) on peers being collaborators rather than correctors, this question aimed to elicit advice rather
than baldly stating what was “bad”. This should be emphasized in oral or written instructions to theclass, such as by suggesting “write a comment to help others improve in the future, and remember to bekind but clear”.

Self-reflection and goal setting
After choosing from a set of options such as those in the first question of Figure 2, all feedback
forms contained some variation on self-reflective questions encouraging students to consider theirstrengths and weaknesses in their own words, such as “what do you want to improve next time?”. As
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above, the focus was to consider how to improve in future rather than to be excessively negative
regarding their own performance. Having previously decided some weaknesses in the closed
question provided before this one, this open question type had the advantages of allowing students toexpress themselves more freely or justify why they had found certain aspects of the task challenging,as well as to autonomously select a goal on how to improve.
One principal that can guide students in generating productive goals for future improvement is
the SMART method, which recommends that goals be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,
and Timely: students who used these perimeters to set goals were found to better achieve learning
outcomes, such as delivering more professional presentations (Lawlor, 2012). Asking students toconsider one to three weaknesses narrows their focus to become more specific, and all of the options
provided are realistic and attainable with some practice or focus. Furthermore, the options also allow
timely goals to be chosen as they set the duration of the goal as “your next presentation”.

Insights for teachers
Klimova (2015) suggests that this form of goal setting question could not only assist students
with selecting goals autonomously, but might also benefit teachers reviewing these answers, as
through self-reflection:“Students can critically think about what they have learned during the course and also convey
some of their personal experience, experiences and feelings... teachers can then draw
conclusions about their teaching practices and reconsider some of their teaching approaches
and strategies” (p. 174)
By reviewing student responses, either with the class to highlight interesting or important
examples, or outside of class contact hours, teachers can gain real-time insights into anxieties ordifficulties students are facing. In the English Presentation classes discussed so far, difficulties faced
by students may include looking at the audience, remembering their speech, or making gestures
while speaking. The act of reviewing and reflecting on student goals or problems can enable teachers
to offer strategies targeting these. One such example could be that if students commonly reported
difficulties with remembering their speech, teachers could recommend that they practice three times
before class: once with a full set of notes or complete speech, a second time with shorter notes, anda third time with brief bullet points. While the problems reported by students will vary on different
courses, a review of responses to these types of questions might provide useful insights for educators
seeking to combat common issues and improve their own teaching practice.

Effects of group cohesion
The most effective peer feedback offers both strengths and weaknesses (Cho & Cho, 2011),
which might be challenging for some students. Although Kamimura (2006) found that harmony
promoted rather than hindered peer feedback in a Japanese EFL context, students may feel anxious
about criticizing others’ performance. Previous research indicates that establishing a comfortablelearning environment improves the quality of peer feedback (Hansen & Liu, 2005), and therefore,
more cohesive groups might be better able to provide constructive feedback.
Students in the Presentation classes that undertook this activity had previously been divided into
teams that had already worked closely together for several lessons, and icebreaker activities wererun at the start of both semesters, which explicitly aimed to build cohesive teams by selecting shared39

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goals (Maxfield, 2021, in press). Students were asked to review only their team members’
performances, rather than those of other classmates whom they might not have interacted with prior
to the feedback activity. Peer review was not initiated until Lesson 5, by which time students had
made a team presentation together, given two mini-presentations to their team, and participated inseveral discussions together. It was hoped that doing these tasks together before the feedback
activity helped improve group cohesion and thereby reduced anxiety on giving constructive feedback
as well as praise.

Classroom usage and potential adaptations
This activity has been tested in both online and face-to-face teaching formats. When instructions
were clear and students could see a brief model or explanation of the task before attempting it, they
were able to complete this activity in both environments with seemingly minimal difficulty, and later
iterations in the same course required less explanation as the activity became more familiar. As thisactivity has been successfully used both online and face-to-face, it seems likely that it could also be
used in hybrid learning environments. However, this should perhaps be further researched or trialed
before being implemented on a major scale because the combination of written and oral feedback
might be more difficult to achieve in hybrid environments.
The examples and questions listed above were used in the context of teaching a first-year
university English Presentation class but could be altered to suit a range of other courses, including
L2 writing classes or even those taught in the students’ L1. While questions can be adapted to suit avariety of courses and tasks, previous research has indicated that it is best to offer a combination ofclosed questions to guide students towards providing specific feedback and open questions toencourage reflection. A good starting point could be to consider what would be needed for successful
task performance, perhaps with reference to a rubric, and then to design questions leading students
toward those goals.

Conclusion
Both peer feedback and self-assessment can lead students toward closing the gap between theircurrent level and an ideal future performance. When applied with proper guidance, peer feedback
and self-assessment can increase the evaluative knowledge essential for successful task performance,
assist with judicious and autonomous goal selection, and indicate various strategies on how to getthere. The benefits might extend after this activity has been completed as teacher review of selfassessments can improve their own teaching practices. Moreover, learning how to independently set
and achieve course-relevant goals enables students to continue building on the taught skills beyond
the end of the course.

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