A Comparative Study on the Effect of Teacher and Peer Assessment on Grammar Learning of the Iranian High School EFL Students

Grammar has a significant role in second language (L2) learner's communicative competence; it offers L2 learners the structures they need to communicate their messages and ideas. Therefore, teachers should apply effective strategies to improve students' grammar knowledge. This study investigated the effect of teacher and peer assessment on students’ grammar learning. Forty third-grade female high school students participated in the present research. Then they were divided into two groups of teacher assessment (control group) and peer assessment (experimental group). At first two groups were pre-tested on a grammar test. Then students received treatment for six sessions. The course included two sessions per week. Grammatical points included in high school English textbook (III), were used to be taught to the students in each group. In doing the exercises the participants in the experimental group received feedback from their peers while in the control group, the same teacher corrected student's grammatical errors. At the end of the experiment, a post-test was administered to see if the treatment had made any difference in the grammar learning of the experimental group. Results of the t-test showed that participants in the experimental group significantly outperformed the participants in the control group. The finding has some implications for EFL teachers and material developers. It may give them some ideas to allocate more peer assessment activities for grammar courses.

Keywords:

Teacher assessment , Peer assessment , Grammar learning , EFL High school