Usefulness of Peer Comments for English Language Writing Through Web-Based Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is an educational activity where students evaluate peers’ performance quantitatively with ratings and/or qualitatively with comments. Quantitative and qualitative feedback given and received by students is the core of the peer assessment process, and acts as references offered for the author’s consideration for amendments to his/her work which leads to knowledge construction. However, the effects of peer comments on students’ writing revisions have rarely been studied with research on peer feedback commonly emphasizing the reliability and validity of peer ratings. Through this paper, we share the qualitative findings of students’ peer comments on their English language writing. The case study was conducted in a secondary school in Singapore where a web-based peer assessment tool, was used to support part of the secondary three English language curriculums to help improve students’ competence in writing argumentative essays.