Feasability of Self-Assessment in ESL Classrooms

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 Introduction:

Assessment is one of the crucial components of the education. Traditional exams and tests are mostly based on materials taught in the course to meet predetermined objectives. They cannot assess whether or not learners can apply it. To truly understand some new ideas, students need to apply it. My experience as an English teacher provides some ideas to frame my discussion of assessment. Although many teachers think that the scores of the exams and the tests are objective and cannot be wrong, I think that these scores are uncertain they need to be supplemented by some other assessments. Traditional assessments in their summative and formative forms such as tests, quizzes or exams are often graded and returned back to the students. Unfortunately, the grades become more important than the learning itself. Most of the students care about the number or the letter that is written on the top of the paper. Although some of the teachers provide comments and feedback associated with the score, but the students assume that what matters in the end is the number or letter grade because it is the only measure. Furthermore, assessment is a complex but fundamental process that must be based upon a well designed network of practices. A single assessment cannot completely describe and measure what a student has learned or understood. Consequently, associating the traditional assessment with certain alternative assessments could create better learning environment and enhance the learning-teaching process for both learners and teachers though engaging the learners directly in different stages of this process. In fact, some research addresses the benefits of providing the students with an active role in taking the responsibility of l...

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...thout grading it, and then gives it back to the students to evaluate their work according to a rubric (see appendix 2), and return it back to the teacher. This procedure is repeated before and after every formative test. At the end of the course, the learners fill in a survey questionnaire to understand the feasibility of the self assessment and tell about their experience. Interviews with some learners are done to clarify some obscure aspects. The teacher’s first evaluation is taken into consideration to drive the conclusion of the research. The results of their placement test are compared to their results of the summative test. The data collected from the questionnaire is analyzed quantitatively by using SPSS program. While the data collected from the interviews is analyzed qualitatively. All these data is completed by observing the students and their changes.

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