| Self-assessment |
Main Points:
The ability to take charge of one’s learning includes the ability to assess that learning, both to evaluate it’s effectiveness, and as a guide to further study. As Holec (1980: 33) says, "The learner does not define his needs a priori, but works them out empirically as he goes along."
The effectiveness of self-assessment is detailed by Nunan (1996: 21), who states that, "Autonomy is enhanced when learners are encouraged to self-monitor and self-assess."
Brindley (1989: 60) says that self-assessment has five purposes. Firstly, learners have greater responsibility for assessment of their proficiency and progress; secondly it lets them diagnose their strong and weak areas; thirdly it lets them compare their present level with the level they wish to obtain; fourthly it helps them become more motivated; and lastly it helps them to develop their own criteria for monitoring their progress.
However, Brindley (1989: 61) also points out that there are objections to self-assessment. "The idea that learners can be reliable judges of their own performance is by no means universally accepted." Therefore self-assessment is a skill, that has to be learned. Brindley (1989: 83) divides this learning into technical training, and psychological training. Technical training is to help the students judge their own performance, and consists of self-monitoring of language use, development of criteria, definition of objectives, and knowledge about language learning. The CILL Internet site discusses these in its section on self-assessment, and in the section on the learner diary. The psychological training involves changing the learner’s view of his role in the language learning process to one where they see assessment as the responsibility of the learner .
There is evidence that self-assessment in independent learning may work in the Hong Kong context, where it is a rare feature of the education system, and learners are therefore probably unfamiliar with it. The subjects of a study by Thomson (1996: 77 - 92) in Australia, in which 35 out of 98 learners were Chinese, and the majority of these were from Hong Kong, showed that the overall rating of attitude to the self-assessment project for these Chinese students was 3.0 out of 4, where 4 was the highest approval rating. However, Thomson (1996: 85) does mention that there are problems to overcome. The problems from her study were students conditioning by traditional school culture which did not promote student responsibility in assessment, the idea that assessment was the responsibility of the teacher, a desire for a high level of support and guidance from the teacher in self-assessment, few or inappropriate strategies for self-assessment, and lack of self-esteem, especially among female Chinese students in overall rating rather than criterion-referenced assessment.
Brindley, Geoff, (1989) Assessing Achievement in the Learner-Centered Curriculum New South Wales: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University
Holec, Henri (1980) Learner training: meeting needs in self-directed learning. In Altman, H.B. & James, C.V. (eds.) Foreign Language Learning: meeting individual needs Oxford: Pergamon
Nunan, David (1996) Towards autonomous learning: some theoretical, empirical and practical issues. In Pemberton, Richard; et al.(1996) Taking Control: Autonomy in Language Learning Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 13 - 26
Thomson, Chihiro Kinoshita (1996) Self-assessment in self-directed learning. In Pemberton, Richard; et al.(1996) Taking Control: Autonomy in Language Learning Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 77 - 92