The Impact of Peer Assessment on Enhancing Learners’ Writing Proficiency

Abstract

The current study aims at examining the impact of peer-assessment in enhancing students’ writing proficiency in the Department of English, university of Guelma. Students of English as a foreign language are facing a variety of problems that make their writing not proficient. Thus, in order to test our hypothesis which suggests the probability of enhancing the writing proficiency through using peer-assessment technique a descriptive method has been conducted, in which two questionnaires were administered. The first one has been provided to a sample group(60) of third year LMD students who were assigned randomly, whereas; the other sample was addressed to(15) English teachers of written expression from the English Department at Guelma university. The main aim of these questionnaires was to gather significant information about the importance of peer-assessment in enhancing the writing proficiency in EFL classrooms. The gathered data have shown that peer-assessment is an effective technique which increases students’ writing proficiency, also this technique of PA help teachers to monitor and support their students learning in general and writing in particular. Consequently, the results of the questionnaires have confirmed the research hypothesis. In the light of the results, students need to be assessed by their peers in order to enhance their writing proficiency.