Self assessment of foreign language oral production: assessment accuracy, the role of proficiency level and implicit training
- Autores: Angels Piñana
- Directores de la Tesis: Mia Victori (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2009
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Elsa Tragant Mestres de la Torre (presid.), Lucrecia Keim Cubas (secret.), Maria González-Davies (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The objective of the present thesis is to investigate four different areas related to self assessment: First of all, self assessment accuracy, that is, its validity and reliability when compared to traditional forms of assessment; secondly, the role of proficiency in self assessment; thirdly, the function of implicit training for self assessment; and finally, the cognitive processes that learners' engage in when they self-assess their oral production.
The theoretical framework includes Constructivism, Social constructivism and Social Cognitive Theory, which emphasise the importance of self regulatory processes for learning, as well as the methodologies centred in the learner, which cover the issues of learner autonomy, learner strategies and strategy training. Language education and its relationship with language assessment are also reviewed in order to reflect the importance of alternative ways of assessment and of self assessment in particular.
Self-assessment is regarded as one of the crucial areas in the promotion of learner autonomy (Dickinson, 1987, 1992; Blanche & Merino, 1989; Harris, 1997; Dam, 1995; Little 2005). Autonomous learners are meant to take responsibility in assessing their own performance, which involves not only perceiving their weaknesses and strengths in the use of the foreign language, but also acquiring the critical knowledge that will help them make informed decisions about their future learning. Moreover, a number of benefits attributed to self-assessment, such as enhancing the learning process, raising the awareness of learners' perceived competence or increasing learners' motivation (Oscarsson, 1989, 1997. However, some studies have questioned whether learners have the necessary experience to make judgements about their learning (Pierce, Swain & Hart, 1995; El-Koumi, 2001), hence casting doubts on self assessment reliability, especially among less proficient L2 learners (Heilenman, 1990).
Two studies were undertaken: First, a study with 105 adult EFL learners, and second, a case-study with a sample of 16 learners. In the larger study, learners were asked to write a short text (one paragraph) self assessing their oral performance just after having carried out an oral task; and respond to a self-assessment checklist. Results from both instruments, the self assessment paragraph and the checklist, were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The analysis took into account learner proficiency, which had been previously measured with a placement test.
In the case-study, 16 EFL university undergraduates in Audiovisual Communication were divided into two groups; the control group and the experimental group. Both groups had the same distribution of students: two low proficiency pairs and two high proficiency pairs. In nine months, the experimental group went through five self assessment sessions. Each session consisted of a speaking task performed in pairs, followed by a think aloud protocol while responding to an oral self-assessment checklist and, immediately afterwards, using their videotaped task as a prompt, a stimulated recall protocol was undertaken. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with each pair. The control group just went through the first and last session; therefore, this group was not exposed to self assessment repetition. Furthermore, all participants' performance was assessed by two different EFL teachers in order to establish comparisons between learners' own self-assessment and teachers' judgements. As with the larger study, results from the case-study were also quantitatively and qualitatively analysed.
The main conclusions are ¿ Self assessment correlates with external measures of proficiency even though there is some variation in the correlation coefficients depending on the instruments used to retrieve the data, as holistic measures of external proficiency proved to be more valid than composite ones. Two issues seem to play a role in self assessment accuracy. One of them is sharing of criteria between external and internal assessors, that is, teachers and students and the other is learner subjectivity.
¿ The more proficient learners are the more accurate the self assessment seems to be with measures of general external proficiency but less accurate with measures of oral production. However, high proficient learners tended to underestimate whereas low proficient learners tended to overestimate their abilities. Reasons for misestimation were found in learners' subjectivity which seemed to be promoted by a number of factors, such as rater severity, the biased perception that gives more relevance to the weaknesses than the strengths, the influence of their previous experience in L2 learning or, as a self defence strategy.
¿ Implicit training consisting of repetition of assessment activities did not have an effect on learners self assessment and no differences were found between the two proficiency groups.
¿ Learners' main foci of attention were related to the areas of the speaking domain, mostly Range, followed by comments on their own performance, strategies and language practice. They also focused in minor degree on internal and external factors, the task characteristics, their proficiency and their assessment skills. Nearly half of the comments identified a problem while the rest were related to their reported performance, the attribution of causes and comments related to determining to take an action to be carried out in the future. Their reference was divided in similar degree between their L2 general proficiency and the oral task they had performed before self assessing. Finally, more than a half of their judgments were negative, the rest were either positive or did not reflect any positive or negative opinion. No significant differences between the two proficiency groups were found. Only two variables Focus of attention on Task characteristics and Focus of attention on L2 proficiency seemed to predict whether learners belonged to one proficiency group or the other. If learners focus more on Task characteristics it seems to show that they have more probability of belonging to the high group, whereas when they focus their attention on their L2 proficiency, it seems to predict that they belong to the low proficiency group.
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