The Application of Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment (TSCA) in Private Colleges

College students’ writing abilities were slowly progressing in the Chinese context. This problem was mainly due to the over-dependence on the teacher’s feedback and the confusion about the writing assessment criteria. This resulted in the low ability of students to self-evaluate their essays. Thus, teacher-student collaborative assessment (TSCA) was introduced to guide students in finding the problems that existed in their peers’ writing which in reverse could also help them detect similar errors in their writing. This study aimed to explore the practicality of the TSCA principle in private colleges with students’ English proficiency below the average. Altogether 42 sophomores majoring in English were selected as the participants. They had taken English writing courses for one year and had some foundation. The questionnaire was given before the course to acquire students’ attitudes towards the TSCA principle. Then students’ writing scores for four assignments were collected during the implementation of the TSCA principle. The results showed that it was applicable to implement the TSCA principle in private colleges for lower-proficient students with their high willingness to this principle. Hopefully, students could have a general idea of writing assessment criteria and do self-evaluation in later autonomous learning.