Peer assessment – a learning activity for everyone?

The purpose of this study is to find out how formative peer assessment can be a help in the learning process of students in lower secondary school, as well as a resource to decrease the workload of the teacher in order to give them more time to support students in the classroom. The students were assigned a short writing assignment and were then asked to provide peer response on a text by an anonymous classmate. They were given the choice to write their feedback in Swedish or in English. The third and final step was to edit their own text with the help of the peer feedback they had received. An analysis was made of the peer comments as well as of the st udents’ ability to use those comments to make improvements in their own text. Findings include a tendency towards more general comments on content and story (macro level) among the students who gave their response in English. The students who gave their feedback in Swedish were more able to give advice on micro level aspects of the text, i.e. spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. Another finding was that students with weaker English skills were also more likely to give comments of a more general nature than students with stronger English skills. However, the study showed that students on all levels benefited from the process of giving and receiving peer feedback