The effect of peer-tutoring on Iranian elementary student's achievement in listening, reading, and writing in English

While strong evidence has been provided for the effectiveness of cross age peer tutoring, there is less empirical evidence to support the efficacy of same age peer tutoring. Hence, the purpose of this study was to determine the short-term and long-term academic effects of same age peer tutoring on elementary students'' achievement in listening, reading and writing. The treatment consisted of about 16 sessions containing 15 to 30 minutes peer tutoring for each of the 3 skills in the study. The participants of the study were 60 grade one elementary students. The experimental group students were taught under peer mediated system while the students in the control group were taught under teacher mediated system. The data were analyzed using several independent and paired t-tests which were administered across pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test scores. The results indicated that same age peer tutoring led to students'' significant improvement in listening, reading and writing in the experimental group, and that this improvement was to stay over time as indicated by the delayed post-test. The findings also showed that students'' gain score in experimental group was significantly higher than students'' gain score in control group in all skills. The results have implications for instruction in primary schools.