Abstract:

Formative assessment appears to play an important role in the development of oral communication skills, supporting self-regulated learning and helping to lessen the anxiety linked to oral presentations. Despite its potential, formative oral assessment remains largely absent from the evaluation practices of French teachers in Quebec’s high schools. Additionally, co-evaluation, an effective practice for formative oral assessment, seems to be unknown to most teachers and few studies have been conducted on this matter. These observations point to the need for a better understanding of how formative co-evaluation can support students’ oral communications skills.

Consequently, our study pursued two specific objectives:
1) to measure the effects of formative co-evaluation on the development of oral communications skills of high school students;
2) to describe possible reasons underlying these effects.

To do so, we conducted a study based on a mixed methods research design among three groups of first-year high school students (12 to 13 years old). We created a teaching unit that included a student-student formative co-evaluation in experimental group 1, and a teacher-student formative co-evaluation in experimental group 2. No co-evaluation was implemented in the control group. Data collected from a pre-test and a post-test were analyzed using an analysis of variance (ANOVA), while data collected from semi-structured interviews were examined using a content analysis.

The presentation will outline key findings from both strands of data. With regards to the first objective, quantitative results indicate that the two methods of co-evaluation produce similar effects on improving oral communication skills. Concerning the second objective, qualitative analyses reveal that student-student co-evaluation seems to promote intrinsic motivation which leads students to gain a sense of responsibility for their learning and spend more time getting ready for their presentation. Meanwhile, teacher-student co-evaluation helps improve self-confidence in learners, especially when the teacher is highly regarded by the students. These results offer various possible teaching avenues to guide teachers establishing their own co-evaluation procedure.

Keywords:

Oral communication skills, teaching of oral communication, formative oral assessment, co-evaluation.