| The concept of self-assessment was first proposed by Oscarson in1980. Since then, more and more researchers have attempted to introduce self-assessment to EFL classroom instruction. Many abroad studies about the role of self-assessment in classroom instruction reported positive results and found that self-assessment can contribute to language teaching and enhance students'language abilities. While in Chinese context, most of the researchers think that the self-assessment of English writing skills for non-English major students is not accurate, because they think that self-assessment is a concept that does not meet the practices of oriental culture and that teachers should be totally responsible for students'evaluation. Is self-assessment of English writing skills really inaccurate for non-English major students? The current study attempts to answer the question by conducting experiment.The current study attempts to investigate the accuracy of self-assessment used in assessing the English writing skills of Chinese university by non-English majors. Two questions are discussed: 1. whether self-assessment of English writing skills is accurate for non-English major students in Chinese context ? 2. Are there any differences of the accuracy of self-assessment for English writing skills between different genders ? The students'ratings are compared with those of the teachers who rate the writings by the same criteria. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOV Analysis and Pearson correlations were conducted to analyze the collected data..The results show that:⑴Participants are not self-confident enough to give higher scores to themselves than their tutors and they tend to underestimate themselves in a comparable way to their tutors (78% of the students tend to underestimate themselves, 17% of the students overestimate, only 4.9% students exactly estimate themselves).⑵Participants could make self-assessment accurately in aspects of structure and language, and they have a good command of language use structure of the English writing. As far as content and vocabulary concerned, although the participants could not make accurate self-assessment, on the whole they under- estimated the performances, but to some extent they know what they should write and which vocabulary they should choose in the English writing. To the author's surprise, the participants could not judge their self-assessment performance in the aspects of mechanics in English writing.⑶As for the second question, there are existing some differences between male and female students. Both male and female students could not make accurate self-assessments in the aspects of mechanics, while both could make accurate self-assessment in the aspects of vocabulary. What is more, male students'self-assessments are more accurate than those of female students in the aspects of content, structure and language use.The findings of the current research appear to provide complementary view for the feasibility of using writing self-assessment. Based on the findings, on the whole, the students can make a relatively accurate writing self-assessment though slightly underestimate themselves, which means that self-assessment of English writing skills for non-English majors can just be used as an complementary tool for English writing teaching. It is quite innovative, practical and necessary to use self-assessment as a supplementary evaluation tool in teaching plan. The current research has facilitated student-centeredness and student autonomy in the self-assessment activities. The introduction of self-assess language learning requires changes in the role of both learners and teachers. Learners need to become more aware of their central role in the decision-making process. Teachers should bear the importance of gender differences of non-English students in mind and manage their classes taking into account of gender differences when necessary so as to create a harmonious English writing learning environment for students of either gender.
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