The Effects Of Self-assessment On Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of English Articles

There has been an upsurge in the interest in self-assessment in the past fewdecades as the appeal for assessment for learning and learner autonomy grows higher.Abundant research has been conducted on students’ self-assessment. However, mostresearch about self-assessment puts emphasis on its validity and reliability whilerelatively little attention has been paid to its effects on students’ learning, especially inChinese context. In fact, some researchers argue that the most important aspect ofself-assessment is its effects on learning. The present study was designed to explorethe effects of self-assessment on Chinese EFL learners’ article acquisition. Thefindings of the study are expected to answer the following two research questions:(1) Does self-assessment practice have positive effects on Chinese EFL learners’acquisition of English articles? If yes, is there any difference in the effects ofself-assessment on learners of different proficiency levels?(2) How do the students perceive the effectiveness of self-assessment for theirarticle learning?Eighty-seven grade three junior middle school students from two intact parallelclasses participated in the four-week study. Among them,45in one class were used asthe experimental group, while42in the other class were employed as the controlgroup. Participants in the experimental group were divided into three subgroups:high-level group, mid-level group and low-level group. Participants in both theexperimental group and control group did the rewriting tasks and those in theexperimental group performed self-assessment. All the participants took the pretestand posttest measuring their ability to use English articles. At the end of the study, allparticipants in the experimental group filled a questionnaire and six were interviewed.The data analyzed included the pretest and posttest scores of both theexperimental group and control group, the pretest and posttest scores of the threesub-groups, and the results of the questionnaire and the interview. The quantitative and qualitative analyses resulted in the following findings. First, the practice ofself-assessment had positive effects on Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of Englisharticles. Second, self-assessment had differential effects on learners of differentproficiency levels. The effects of self-assessment on the mid-level and low-levellearners were much greater than the effects on the high-level learners and the effectson low-level learners were the greatest. Third, a significant majority of the studentshad positive perceptions of the effectiveness of self-assessment for their articlelearning. They believed that self-assessment helped them to evaluate theirperformance, identify what to improve, improve their performance, enhance theirmotivation and boost their confidence.Based on the findings of this study, implications are provided from theoreticaland practical perspectives. Much enlightenment has been given to the application ofself-assessment in Chinese EFL context. Due to various limitations, the findings ofthe present study should be interpreted with caution. Further studies are needed to geta clearer picture about this topic.