Feasibility Of Applying Student Self-Assessment Techniques-Rubrics And Reflective Journals-in College English Teaching For Non-English Majors

This research aims at exploring the feasibility of applying student self-assessment in college English teaching for non-English majors. College English Curriculum Requirements (For Trial Implementation) released by China Ministry of Education in 2004, states,"Assessment is a key component in college English teaching. A comprehensive, objective, scientific and accurate evaluation system is of vital importance to the achievement of the course goal."Assessment functions are often described as summative or formative. While compared with summative assessment, formative assessment views assessment as a diagnostic tool so that teachers may appropriately cater for the individual needs of their students and students can determine their areas of strengths and weaknesses, celebrating their strengths and giving greater attention to improving their weaknesses. This results in the promotion of learning on the ground that the educational purposes of formative assessment characterized by summarizing, revising, and facilitating have been fulfilled during the teaching-learning process. For formative assessment to be more productive, student self-assessment is recommended to be implemented. More importantly, such application will contribute to the achievement of the objectives of higher education, i.e., to cultivate autonomous and lifelong learning undergraduates.The ability to self-assess one's own learning is a core educational skill. While domestic literatures concerned to date are only restricted to the theoretical level and the area of how to apply student self-assessment in college English teaching is far from being explored. This paper then presents two concrete techniques of student self-assessment for instructors, rubrics and reflective journals. As to the research methods, a small-scale (two classes involved) as well as a short-time span (three months duration) pilot study has been conducted, after which more instruments for collecting data are administered, including distribution of questionnaires, analysis of sample reflective journals, and interviews with the experimental instructors. The final results show that both the instructors and a significant percentage of the undergraduates hold positive attitude towards such a new way of assessment from the perspectives of their concepts, attitudes, the effectiveness of implementation and the prospects concerning student self-assessment. That is to say, the plausibility of student self-assessment has been proved. Also included in this paper are some suggestions for consultation, especially for the following related studies.