would have been able to give them yourself, and that you will then be able to
concentrate on giving them feedback about really important aspects of their
learning.
3 Remind learners of the benefits of explaining things to each other.
Explaining a difficult area is one of the best ways of helping the learner who
is actually trying to explain it, to make sense of the issue. Putting things into
words helps learners to get their own minds around ideas and concepts. On
the receiving end, having something explained by a fellow learner can be
less intimidating than when a tutor is doing the explaining.
4 Make the assessment criteria really clear. When assessing learners’ work
yourself, you will probably do much of your assessment against criteria that
are clear in your mind, but not written down in any detail. For learners to be
able to peer-assess well, they need a firm briefing about what they should be
looking for, and elements that should score marks as well as lose them.
5 Consider getting the learners themselves to formulate the criteria for
peer-assessment. Ask learners, in groups, to work out a marking scheme for
a task or exercise, and to put marks against criteria that they would be
looking for while assessing each other’s work. Get each group to display
their criteria to the whole class, and justify the weighting they have awarded
different elements of their schemes. Then help the learners to choose an
overall peer-assessment scheme which reflects each of the group products.
Aim for the whole group to have a sense of ownership of the final peer-
assessment criteria.
6 Think about when the peer-assessment criteria should be generated.
When the criteria are generated before learners undertake the task that is
going to be peer-assessed, learners can keep the criteria in mind as they
work, and the quality of their work is better. Alternatively, working out peer-
assessment criteria after learners have undertaken a task tends to lead to
sharper criteria, as they know what they tried to achieve in the task.
7 Consider using peer-assessment to cover more ground. For example, set
a range of peer-assessed tasks, so that learners are all assessing something
that they have not done themselves. This causes the class as a whole to do more
thinking and practising, and to become aware of any gap in their own
language resources.
8 Assess alongside learners who are peer-assessing. If, for example,
learners are peer-assessing each other’s presentations, it can be useful for
you to assess alongside them, using the same criteria. When learners see that
the average of their assessment is close to yours, their confidence in peer-
assessment increases, and they become more willing to enter into it fully in
future.
9 Moderate and adjudicate as necessary. You may find that it is much
quicker to moderate a large pile of peer-assessed written work than to mark
it from scratch yourself. You will soon be alerted to the particular learners
whose peer-assessing is too lenient or too harsh, and can adjust accordingly.78 ASSESSMENT