The Impact of Peer and Self-assessment on Teenage B2 Students´ Use of Present Perfect Simple, Present Perfect Continuous and Past Perfect Simple in their Spontaneous Spoken Production

Abstract

This qualitative action research study investigated the impact of peer- and self-assessment strategies on enhancement of oral competence. The 17 participants were semi-fluent B2 (CEFR) speakers of English. However, at the beginning of the study, they communicated only through relatively basic grammar structures. This research study was framed upon the belief that one of the abilities underlying speaking proficiency is grammatical competence, which consists of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation (Oxford, 1989). Similarly, Gu (2010) believes that Learners supported by learning strategies can maximize their outcome and, therefore, improve their oral production. Peer-assessment contributes to the development of self-directed learners (Boud, 1991), and provides more tools for selfevaluation (Cheng & Warren, 2005). Additionally, self-assessment improves learner motivation, reduces frustration, increases productivity and autonomy, and leads to higher retention. The study showed that these two self-monitoring strategies have a positive impact on the participants’ oral competence. The learners became more aware of their use of tenses as they were able to identify their own mistakes, provide feedback to their peers and reflect on the value of peer and self-assessment. Additionally, they became more autonomous as to set new action plans in order to improve their use of perfect tenses. Key words: self-assessment, peer-assessment, oral competence, self-monitoring, selfdirected learners.