Student assessment of oral presentations in German as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Students are usually afraid of making oral presentations in a foreign language, mainly when they are beginners, as it is the case in this work. The main idea was to study how language skills were evolving and if students were able to recognize that progress. This work presents the methodology that has been followed in order to integrate the students assessment in the evaluation of their oral presentations in German as a Foreign Language, at the Universitat Politècnica de València. The testing process was carried out in two ways: peer and self-assessment. Data was collected according to the various presentations. The paper describes the quantitative results of peer evaluation throughout the term and the qualitative feedback they provided. Data analysis permitted to observe how peer and self-assessment positively evolved throughout the term. What can be considered more important is that students have improved their formal communication skills, while they have also developed their knowledge on German language.