Essay Writing, Student Self-Assessment, Teacher Grading: An Integrated Approach

On the basis of a practical classroom experiment, this paper presents a proposal for integrating students’ self-assessment of their essays into the teachers’ grading with a view to promoting a more balanced interaction between students and teachers in higher education. A cohort of international students enrolled on the English-taught master’s degree in International Relations submitted their essays for the academic English class for intercultural communication at the University of Napoli Federico II. As an essential part of their assessment, they were asked questions about their essays during their oral examinations. The questions were meant to explore the students’ writing process, their final output and their varying sense of personal satisfaction with their essays. The aims of the questions were twofold: to develop the students’ (self)critical stance and awareness of academic writing conventions, and to replace the oral examination with a dialogic, anxiety-free interaction between tutor and student focused on essay writing. In light of the current debate on the academic writing agenda and assessment methods in higher education, I explore the contribution that the students’ self-assessment of their essays can give to the teacher’s allocation of final grades and, in a wider perspective, to the development of the students’ academic identity as novice researchers proving their critical thinking and creative insights.