An Investigation of the Reliability and Validity of Peer-, Self-, and Teacher Assessment in EFL Learners’ Written and Oral Production

Alternative types of assessment have been introduced to align to the students’ learning aims. Although, the growing body of literature about alternative types of assessment such as peer-assessment and selfassessment shed light on the advantages and benefits of embedding assessment in classroom activities, there is not absolute agreement on the consistency and accuracy of these types of assessment. To this aim, this study attempted to investigate the reliability and validity of self-assessment and peer- assessment of Iranian EFL learners’ written and oral production. The data was obtained from 32 upper-intermediate students who were required to write a three-paragraph essay and present a ten-minute lecture individually. After collecting the essays, each essay was assessed by two teachers, two peer-assessors, and its own writer using an essay rating sheet. To measure the reliability of self-assessment in assessing written production, each essay was assessed again two weeks later by its writer. Furthermore, each student gave a ten-minute lecture and other students and the teachers assessed the lecturer using an oral assessment sheet; in addition, the lecturer then assessed himself/herself immediately after his/her lecture based on the same rubric. The results of the study indicated that peer-assessment was more reliable in assessing oral production rather than written production; however self-assessment was highly reliable in written production assessment. Moreover, there was a higher correlation between peer-assessment and teacher assessment in assessing written production rather than oral production. While there was a high correlationbetween self-assessment and teacher assessment in assessing written production, the correlation between self-assessment and teacher assessment in assessing oral production was not significant.