THE PRACTICE AND STUDENTS’ REACTION TOWARD SELF AND PEER-ASSESSMENTS IN CREATIVE WRITING CLASS Yunik Susanti Universitas Nusantara PGRI Kediri yuniksusanti@unpkediri.ac.id Abstract Self-assessment and peer assessment deal with promoting students' reflective effort in writing learning process. The students’ writing achievement, critical thinking, and autonomous skills are encouraged in the implementation of these teaching techniques. The purposes of this study are to implement, to know the benefits, and to find the student responses to self-assessment and peer-assessment in writing classes. This study was conducted in second-year students of English Language Department Nusantara PGRI University in Creative Writing Subject. The study used observations, student reflection notes, interviews, and documents for data collection. Data were analysed using three-step qualitative data analysis; display of data, reduction educe of data, and conclusions drawing. Data analysis showed that the benefits of peer assessment and self-assessment outweigh the drawbacks, as they can provide students with new knowledge, skills, and understanding of the writing process and student achievement. Peer assessment and self-assessment enable students to gain better experience, making it easier for them to apply and respond to their writing. The study concludes that English teachers are recommended to implement these teaching techniques in facilitating the students to fully experience their writing process and to boost the students’ writing ability. Keywords: Self-assessment, Peer-assessment, EFL, Teaching Writing, Creative Writing Class I INTRODUCTION Writing plays an important role in a student's life when learning English. It develops students' competencies in academic disciplines, promotes student development in social and emotional dimensions, and plays a role in the continuation of student learning and self-expression. Walsh (2010) argued writing is essential since writing is widely used by academicians and professionals. When learners get difficulties expressing their ideas in writing, they cannot communicate accurately with teachers, managers, colleagues, or others. In addition, the majority of professional communication such as proposals, memos, reports, applications, preliminary interviews, and emails are conducted in the form of writing. Furthermore, Durga & Rao (2018) stated that writing is important to pass the academic process such as finishing students’ education. Therefore, the ability to write is essential for students in academic and non-academic aspects for example occupational reasons. However, there are challenges teachers face when teaching writing skills. These challenges are divided into two factors: inner factors and outer ones. The inner factors are the learner's language proficiency, interference with the native language, motivation, and learner’s reading habits. While, the outer factors are the class condition, teaching aid availability for writing, and time availability (Hidayati: 2018). Furthermore, (Adam et al.: 2021) find that teachers also faced technique-related challenges, difficulty in motivating students to write, time constraints to teach the students, and linguistics-related challenges. Considering those challenges, teachers should consider several principles in teaching writing; stating the writing objective, providing ample writing learning experiences, facilitating students with feedback, and explaining how the students’ writing products are assessed (Brown 2004). By giving feedback and advice, teachers are able to provide opportunities for students to be more autonomous in learning. This process is possible since the teachers involve the students in the process of scoring. The students’ involvement in the process of scoring promotes the growth of essential competence such as accountability, judgment, and independence. Those skills are essential to the students’ professional lives. Self-assessment and peer assessment have been widely studied in the field of education and have been shown to have a number of benefits for both students and teachers, Swaffield, S. (2006); Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007); Clarke, S. (2011). Research has demonstrated that self-assessment and peer assessment promoted students’ motivation and participation in teaching learning process, as students are more likely to be invested in their own learning when they have roles in the assessment process. In the self-assessment process learners locate their knowledge and decide what they are able to do. This activity allows students to become independent and responsible for their learning. They are encouraged to assess themselves as accurately as possible. Park (2019) finds that self-assessment was suitable to be mailto:yuniksusanti@unpkediri.ac.id 2 | Yunik Susanti Lingual (Vol. 15, No.1, 2023) applied in enhancing students’ writing quality, as it encourages them to do a reflection on their writing and locate the component of their writing that needs to be revised. The study also finds that self- assessment can be especially beneficial for second language learners, as it facilitates students to enhance the students’ consciousness of their own language abilities and become more autonomous learners. In addition, Hsu, Chang, and Jong (2020) find that peer assessment enhances both students' achievement and students’ self-efficacy and critical thinking. Peer assessment has a better impact on learning than self-assessment. Peer assessment develops both the students’ responsibility and motivation in learning. It is also beneficial in improving the students’ ability in conducting an assessment (Stanci´c: 2021). In addition, Topping (2009) has shown that peer-assessment can boost diversity and enjoyment, activities and interaction, identity, and connection, self-confidence and understanding with others. The combination of self-assessment and peer-assessment offers several benefits. Peer-assessment facilitates self-assessment. Assessing someone else's achievement or results allows students to better view their ability (Bostock, 2001). Self-assessment and peer-assessment facilitate students with chances to enhance their awareness using feedback from a different point of view (Saito & Fujita, 2004). Feedback allows students to improve their achievement by being aware of the students’ shortcomings and decreasing errors. They have experiences getting their understanding of the topic being studied developed through receiving and giving feedback. By providing feedback in the future, students will improve their performance in the future as the feedback approach allows them to provide appropriate suggestions and advice to help students fine-tune their learning. (Osado, Merlo, & Campo, 2013). Self-assessment and peer assessment facilitate students to enhance their writing skills because students can get feedback from multiple sources and utilize that feedback to revise and enhance their product. Concina's study (2022) examines the implementation of self-assessment and peer assessment in a college-level writing course. Research shows that self-assessment and peer assessment appear to be two separate activities that can complement and affect one another. For both students and instructors, the use of self-assessment and peer- assessment can support autonomous learning. Besides benefits for students, self-assessment and peer assessment can also benefit teachers. Teachers can reduce their workload and gain valuable insight into student study and comprehension by involving the students in the assessment process. Self-assessment and peer assessment can also help in creating a learning environment that facilitates the students to work with others and give one another supports. In this learning situation, students collaborate with others to evaluate and provide feedback on each other's work. Self-assessment and peer assessment are valuable tools to promote students to learn and engage in the classroom. By allowing students to evaluate their own work and those of their peers, teachers can foster a sense of ownership and responsibility for learning. By enabling students to assess their writing and the work of others, teachers promote the students’ capacity to involve and be responsible for their own learning. Wanner and Palmer (2016) argue that self-assessment and peer assessment are necessary for college students to develop an on-going and student-centred view of assessment. Engaging in the teaching-learning process that focuses on self-assessment and peer assessment not only helps students know the procedure of assessment, but it also helps them improve the process and their academic performance. There have been many studies on the use of self-assessment and peer-assessment in a writing class; improving students’ achievement leads to higher scores (Yang, et al.: 2022); improve student learning (Zhan and Wan: 2022); Improve students' knowledge of key elements of assessment and learning outcomes (Seifert and Feliks: 2019); encourages reflective thinking (Ratminingsih, Artini, and Padmadewi: 2017). Taken together, these studies continue to support the use of self-assessment and peer assessment as an effective way to improve students learning and participation in the teaching-learning process. Those studies focused on general outcomes such as performance improvement or learning outcomes, improvement the learning process, assessment process, and reflective thinking. Therefore, the results of these studies may vary depending on the specific context where these assessment techniques are implemented, such as the subject area, the grade level, or the type of assessment task. That’s why this recent study focused on a more specific area of self-assessment and peer assessment namely the implementation of self-assessment and peer assessment in creative writing class. In which the emphasis was on describing how these strategies might be effectively implemented in the classroom. It would be interesting to explore how these approaches be adapted or modified to better support the needs of these students. Therefore, this research also focused on investigating the students’ responses toward the use of self-assessment and peer- assessment in teaching writing. These aspects need to be studied since they The Practice and Students’ Reaction Toward Self and Peer-Assessments in Creative Writing Class | 3 provide us with more comprehensive and reliable knowledge about the use of self-assessment and peer- assessment. In sum, this study aims to implement self-assessment and peer assessment in teaching creative writing, then to know the benefits of using self-assessment and peer-assessment in creative writing, and also to know the students’ reaction to the implementation of self-assessment and peer assessment in creative writing. II METHOD This case study focused on answering the descriptive questions about the implementation, the advantages, and the students' responses about using self-assessment and peer assessment in creative writing class, especially in writing a review. The use of self- and peer-assessment in this study is also considered as ways to boost the students’ motivation since students’ motivation becomes a precursor of the students’ writing achievement. Ary et al. (2010) state that a case study provides a detailed description of an individual, group, class, place, program, process, organization, or community. It provides answers for (what happened) or explains the reasons something happened by paying attention to the process. The subjects of this study were second-year students of the English Language Education Department of Nusantara PGRI Kediri University which consists of 45 students. The data were collected using observation, reflective journals, guided interviews, and documentation. The process of review writing teaching-learning process followed the process of writing proposed by Harmer (2004), starting from drafting, reflecting, revising, and writing the final product. The collected data were then analysed using a three-steps qualitative data analysis; data display, data reduction, and conclusion drawing (Miles and Huberman: 2005). III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results of the data analysis reveal the performance, interests, and student responses to self- assessment and peer assessment in review writing. Data on the performance and benefits of peer assessment and self-assessment are drawn from classroom observations, student-written reflection diaries, and documentation in the form of student writing products. self-assessment and peer assessment have been performed. While data on students' responses to self-assessment and peer assessment were collected from guided interviews with students after self-assessment and peer assessment in teaching creative writing. 3.1 IMPLEMENTATION AND ADVANTAGES OF SELF-ASSESSMENT AND PEER-ASSESSMENT IN TEACHING REVIEW WRITING Objectives teaching creative writing class are at the end of the teaching-learning process students are able to understand the forms, techniques, and content of review writing and able to write the review. Students also have to apply their language skills and knowledge about the concept of review writing in a writing product. In this creative writing class, the students did self and peer-assessments in teaching writing reviews of a film, a hotel, a restaurant, or a food. The process of teaching review followed the writing steps starting with drafting, reflecting, revising, and writing the final product in six weeks. The steps of teaching review writing using self-and peer assessment were as follows: First, the lecturer explained the form and the kinds of review writing they could choose, then the students wrote their first draft of their review, and they chose whether they would write hotel review, film/music review, and restaurant review. After the students wrote their first draft of reviewing, then they read the scoring rubrics for each writing review category (hotel review, film/music review, and restaurant review), after that they identified the strength and weaknesses of their writing, scored their writing, then they revised their draft. In the last step, they submitted their final draft of reviewing writing into the google drive prepared by the lecturer. The next procedure was to conduct a peer assessment. In the first step the students exchanged their drafts, read their peer work then studied the scoring rubric provided by the lecturer, after that they gave comments to their peer work, and they discussed with the lecturer and their peers when they find difficulties assessing their friend’s writing. After that, they uploaded the result of their review. After receiving the results of the review from their peer, the students revised again their writing. When they found difficulties understanding the review from their peer they would ask and discuss it with their peer. Finally, the students wrote their final product of the review writing, they submitted their writing in the 4 | Yunik Susanti Lingual (Vol. 15, No.1, 2023) provided google drive. Table 1. shows the analysis sheet consisted of a framework of review writing to provide the students an insight into their writing. Table 1. Review Writing Framework (Ramet: 2007) Introduction Introduce the subject, focus on to point of writing Content Continue writing by focusing on the point of the article, dealing with each relevant item in a logical order Conclusion Round off article by bringing it back to the beginning. Using that framework, students assessed their first draft. In this process, the students wrote a note that shows the advantages of self-assessment that they had done: A male student (AZAA) stated, "I got a lot of knowledge from this method. Honestly, this is my first time to review something then assessed my own writing, I have just known that review something is not as easy as I think and there are many ways to do that. By assessed my own review I know that my writing needs to be revised" Another male student (LB) stated, "Through this activity I got a lot of new things about how to write review. So, I can express what I felt using logical order. How to make conclusion and opening to be more interesting. By doing self-assessment I know the most grateful thing is to understand how to review text is about and to make people interested in our review.". From those two statements, we can see that by doing the self-assessment process, they could reflect on what they have already achieved or not. These findings support the claim of Nitta and Baba (2014) that self-assessment as part of self-reflection plays the most important role in the development of L2 writing. The students process to manage themselves such as to plan, to assess themselves, to adapt, have important role in writing. After knowing their weaknesses in writing the first draft by conducting self-assessment process. The students revised their review writing and then submitted them to the provided google drive to be assessed by their peer. The following table present some of the peer-assessment results: Picture 1. Students’ Peer-Assessment Process The Practice and Students’ Reaction Toward Self and Peer-Assessments in Creative Writing Class | 5 Picture 1 shows the example of the peer's comments on the draft of the review writing. From the data above we observed that the review included the mechanic aspect (the use of commas and capital letters) and the idea of the review writing. Another example is presented in table 2. The peer commented on the organization of the review writing (thesis statement). Picture 2. Peer Assessment Result From Picture 2 above, we can see that the student colleague has also modified the content of the review writing. In the last step of the peer assessment, the peer also assigns a score based on the scoring grid. Table 2 shows the scale used by students during self-assessment and peer assessment when writing about film reviews. Table 2. Film Review Scoring Rubric This scoring rubric was given at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher explained the description of each indicator in this rubric. Picture 3 below displays an example of the score that the students gave to their peer’s writing on film review. 6 | Yunik Susanti Lingual (Vol. 15, No.1, 2023) Picture 3. Peer Scoring Result 3.2 STUDENTS’ REACTIONS TOWARD THE USE OF SELF-ASSESSMENT AND PEER-ASSESSMENT IN CREATIVE CLASS Data about the reactions of the students toward the use of self-assessment and peer assessment were obtained from self-reflective notes written by the students and guided interviews given to them. In the reflective notes, students also stated that by doing self-assessment and peer-assessment they got valuable experiences. The following figure shows their notes after they did self-assessment and peer- assessment. Picture 4. The Students’ Notes Toward the Use of Self and Peer-Assessment in Teaching Creative Writing Picture 4 shows that students stated that they got new knowledge about giving the critics, experienced the assessment process, got new knowledge on the scoring rubric, gave comments on the students’ works, and knew the steps of review writing. Furthermore, they also got new skills in revising their own and peer’s works, accepting and giving critics, assessing their works and peer works, editing skills, reading and grammar skills, and assessing the students’ work as the teachers did. In addition, they also said they gained a new understanding of the assessment criteria and grading process by sharing and checking their own work and that of others. It is in line with the results of a study conducted by (Orsmond et al.: 1996), who find that students consider peer assessment to be beneficial to their learning and to have a valuable effect on the teaching learning process (Stancic: 2021). The Practice and Students’ Reaction Toward Self and Peer-Assessments in Creative Writing Class | 7 The data analysis also found that at first-time students were not confident to give the score. They were afraid of making mistakes in scoring and could not give the correct reasons why they gave that score to their peer’s work. This finding is consistent with Stancic (2021), who states that peer assessment can be frustrating and difficult for several students, but as they develop their responsibility for their own learning and motivation, students can take the benefits of peer assessment. It enhances their assessment ability and they were able to grade their learning outcomes accurately. A guided interview was implemented to complete the data collected from the questionnaire. There are five questions related to the implementation of self-assessment and five questions about peer- assessment. The questions were composed based on the activities of conducting self and peer- assessment proposed by Boud and Falchikov (1986). The activities included identifying the strengths and weaknesses in their own or their peer’s writing product, and identifying the components of writing that they review. The last two questions were about the students’ attitude toward self and the peer- assessment process stated by Saito and Fujita (2004) and Sluijsmans and Moerkerke (1999). In which self- and peer-assessment facilitated the students to improve students’ interaction, identification, self- confidence and the quality of their writing product. Table 3. Self-assessment Process Questions Questions 1. How did you identify your weaknesses on your review writing? 2. How did you identify your strengths on your review writing? 3. What aspects of writing did you review in your writing? 4. How did you write better by conducting self-assessment? 5. Did feel confident on scoring your own writing using the provided scoring rubric? Table 4. Peer-assessment Process Questions Questions 1. How did you identify your peer weaknesses on their review writing? 2. How did you identify your peer strengths on their review writing? 3. What aspects of writing did you review in your peer writing? 4. Did you gave positive comments on your peer writing? 5. Did feel confident on scoring your peer writing using the provided scoring rubric? On self-assessment and peer-assessment question number one, the students reported that they could notice their own and weaknesses using the scoring rubric. A female student MA said: “When the lecturer explained the scoring rubric, I paid attention and asked several questions about the way how to score appropriately. I am so happy because I could act as a teacher/ gave the score”. Furthermore, another female student TR said that: “I focused on my mistakes when conducting self-assessment, I tried to fix my draft after doing self-assessment. Even though self and peer-assessment needed much time, I enjoyed doing this as I could apply the knowledge about review writing. For the aspects of writing that they reviewed were the content, the grammar of the sentences, the usage of vocabulary, and the generic structure of review writing. These findings are consistent with To and Panadero (2019), who find that engaging students in peer assessment can improve students' understanding of key features of the assessment process and the ability to assess learning outcomes. By 8 | Yunik Susanti Lingual (Vol. 15, No.1, 2023) conducting self-and peer assessments they could evaluate their work, write another review writing better, learn more deeply about review writing, and write a review that is more engaging for the readers. Eventually, reading other works’ reviews could broaden their knowledge and references on review writing, so they write the review better. Doing these activities forces them to read more references about how to assess writing, review how to write incorrect grammar, and enlarge vocabulary. Students reported that self-assessment and peer assessment helped them get used to being evaluated and receiving the evaluation. They are better at admitting mistakes in the writing process, courageously judging others, and being reflective. This agrees with (De Grez et al., 2012), who find students' good reactions to the use of peer-assessment. IV CONCLUSION In conclusion, self-assessment and peer assessment are beneficial for motivating students to learn and to participate actively in the classroom, especially in the context of a writing course. By enabling students to assess their own work and that of their peers, teachers can encourage the students’ engagement and responsibility in their own learning. Their ability to think critically and do reflection also can be developed The benefit of self-assessment and peer assessment outweigh their drawbacks were displayed clearly in this study. They provide students with new knowledge, skills, and understanding. The new knowledge that they could get such as: did reflection on their works, gave critics and feedback, experienced the assessment process, got knowledge of the scoring rubric, and knew the steps of review writing. The new skills that they experienced such as revising, accepting, and giving critics, assessing their works and peer works, editing skills, reading and grammar skills, and assessing their peer’s work as the teachers did. The new understanding that they got for example: knowing the writing scoring rubric and process, sharing and checking their and others’ work. 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