Speaking self-assessment: Mismatches between learners’ and teachers’ criteria

Abstract

Perceptual (mis)matches between teachers and learners are said to affect learning success or failure. Self-assessment, as a formative assessment tool, may, inter alia, be considered a means to minimize such mismatches. Therefore, the present study investigated the extent to which learners’ assessment of their own speaking performance, before and after their being provided with a list of agreed-upon scoring criteria followed by a practice session, matches that of their teachers. In so doing, 29 EFL learners and six EFL teachers served as participants; the learners were asked to assess their audio-recorded speaking performance before and after their being provided with the scoring criteria and practice session. The teachers were also asked to assess the learners’ performance according to the same criteria. Finally, the learners were required to evaluate the effectiveness of doing self-assessment in the form of reflection papers. The results revealed a significant difference between the learners’ assessment of their own speaking ability on the two occasions. The findings also suggested that providing the learners with the scoring criteria and the follow-up practice session minimized the existing mismatches between learner assessment and teacher assessment. Moreover, the inductive analysis of the reflection papers yielded a number of themes suggesting that, despite some limitations, the learners’ overall evaluation of the effectiveness of speaking self-assessment was positive.

Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of self-assessment and teacher feedback in foreign language teaching in general upper secondary education – A case study in Finland

“…In relation to teaching selfassessment skills, only five teachers reported teaching them. These results give cause for concern, as self-assessment advances SRL (Panadero et al, 2017) and foreign language learning (Babaii et al, 2016). Thus, it can be deduced that the implementation of self-assessment in foreign language teaching in Finland is less efficacious than it could be.…”

“…As reported by Butler and Lee (2010), self-assessment impacts learning and confidence positively among young learners of English, however the effect sizes were small. Regarding speaking performance, Babaii et al (2016) found that self-assessment increased learners' levels of self-awareness. Liu and Brantmeier (2019), in turn, point out that young learners of English were able to self-assess their foreign language reading and writing abilities accurately.…”

The Correlation between Self Assessment and Motivation in Learning English of the Second Grade Students of SMP Negeri 6 Palembang

“…grades. Jafarpur (1991) and Babaii, Taghaddomi, and Pashmforoosh (2015) found that there was a lack of consistency between learners' self-assessments and those of the teacher, indicating that self-assessment is unreliable as a method of accurate proficiency measurement, although Butler and Lee (2010) found that such discrepancies could be reduced with learner training. Conversely, Griffee (1998) has reported a positive correlation between students' self-assessment and teachers' evaluations, particularly among higher-level learners, which is further corroborated by the meta-study of self-assessment validity conducted by Ross (1998).…”

Enhancing learners’ awareness of oral presentation (delivery) skills in the context of self-regulated learning

“…Barry, 2012; De Grez et al, 2012; Murphy and Barry, 2016; Reitmeier and Vrchota, 2009; Yamkate and Intratat, 2012) but assessment of presentations is still relatively underexplored (e.g. Babaii et al, 2016; De Grez et al, 2012). In fact, there are even fewer studies on the more pedagogical aspects such as teaching of presentations and improvement of presentation skills.…”

“…Another benefit of conducting self-assessment as shown in research (e.g. Babaii et al, 2016) is its usefulness in minimizing the differences between teachers’ and learners’ evaluation, which has implications for language testing as well as learning (e.g. higher precision in identifying areas for improvement as the evaluation can been triangulated).…”