Contributory Role of Collaborative Assessment in Improving Critical Thinking and Writing

Instilling critical thinking skills in language learners’ mind and enhancing second language writing are gaining momentum in the field of English language teaching. Though some approaches to meeting these objectives have been proposed, review of the literature revealed that the contributory role of collaborative assessment in fostering critical thinking and second language writing has been overlooked to date. Thus, this study was conducted to delve into this issue. To this aim, two intact intermediate EFL classes in Iran, each of which contains 18 learners, were included in the study; they were randomly assigned to Student-Student (S-S) collaborative assessment and Teacher-Student (T-S) collaborative assessment groups. After receiving six sessions of treatment, both groups wrote an essay on an IELTS topic. Results of the study indicated that collaborative assessment, regardless of its type, has the potential to foster critical thinking and writing proficiency. Further, it came to light that S-S collaborative assessment group significantly outperformed the T-S collaborative assessment group in terms of gains in critical thinking and writing proficiency. In light of the findings, language teachers are suggested to involve learners in collaborative assessment processes; further, some suggestions are offered at the end to show some fruitful avenues for further research.