AN INTRODUCTION TO PEER ASSESSMENT OF ORAL PRESENTATIONS

from the classroom to real world applications. Presentation skills practiced in the classroom are the same skills needed to succeed in a wide range of business environments. They are essential for effective communication and valuable to students in both their native and second languages. One way to optimize the time spent in the classroom is to have all students assess their classmate’s presentations. Instead of being an idle audience, they are actively engaged in reviewing the presentation skills of their peers, focusing on those points that are most important for making a presentation successful. A valid concern of many teachers in allowing students to participate in the very important task of assessment is the reliability of their scores. This presentation will detail the findings of a one-year study of Japanese second-year university students assessing each other’s presentations. The results focus on the reliability of students’ assessments of their peer