A Study On Self-Assessment For Learner Autonomy

Being generally recognized as a legitimate need and ultimate goal in education, learner autonomy, together with self-assessment, which is an important index of autonomous learning, have been the focus of research in education in recent years. Despite the numerous contributions on learner autonomy, few of the previous studies did any action researches to evaluate the English major undergraduates' autonomous English learning competence, especially in the Chinese context. Less of them had any investigation on learner autonomy from the viewpoint of self-assessment. So, this study aims to systematically investigate the English majors' autonomous learning situation and writing self-assessment ability, including the differences between high proficiency learners and low proficiency learners.45 freshmen (hereinafter refer to as LPLs) and 48 juniors (hereinafter refer to as HPLs) from English Education Department of Capital Normal University participated in the writing self-assessment experiment, and responded to the Undergraduates' Autonomous English Learning Investigation Questionnaire. Through the correlation and independent samples t test functions of SPSS 10.0 we compared the learners' English writing self-assessment with that of the raters; and also analyzed their autonomous learning situation by processing the qualified questionnaire results through independent samples t test and other functions of SPSS10.0.From the action research it is found that both the LPLs and the HPLs have the expected competence to study autonomously, with that of HPLs being statistically higher than the LPLs. The HPLs got higher means than the LPLs on all the five sub-aspects and total score of autonomous learning questionnaire, among which the differences between them on the third and fifth sub-aspects and the total score is significant statistically.