Student involvement and responsibility for learning is a key element of school-based assessment. Student involvement can be enhanced in a number of ways, in particular through activities which develop students' skills in ongoing self-monitoring and reflection and more structured self assessment and peer assessment.

To view Prof Dylan Wiliam talking about the critical role of self and peer assessment.

To view Prof Chris Davison talking about how to incorporate self-and peer assessment into SBA activities.

Students should be encouraged to keep copies of the records of their own assessments and regularly review their progress to monitor and evaluate their own strengths and to identify areas for improvement. Students can keep their assessments on their own audiocassette or MP3 player, or on a CD-ROM, or even a DVD. They can also include any practice SBA work (including any practice or 'mock' SBA tasks they do outside class, for example with a group of friends). These personal speaking samples can be used for students to listen to / watch by themselves and undertake some self-evaluation. They can also be used with classmates, by taking turns to show / play their own oral language samples and inviting classmates to give comments on their performance in the key domains of pronunciation, delivery, communication strategies, vocabulary, language correctness and variety, and ideas and organisation.

For students, this is important because it is necessary to be familiar with what they are striving to accomplish in order to earn the highest score they can. A good way to achieve this familiarity is through peer assessment of the mock SBA activities, where students are given the opportunity to assess fellow students' performances on SBA-style tasks using the SBA criteria.

To view Mrs Anne Tam and Ms Pik-yuk Tse talking about the value of peer assessment.

Click here to view the self and peer evaluation forms linked to the assessment criteria in the HKDSE.

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