İKİNCİ DİL KONUŞMA BECERİSİNDE ÖZ DEĞERLENDİRME: ÖĞRENCİLERİN ÖZ-DEĞERLENDİRME SÜRESİNCEKİ DOĞRULUĞU VE GELİŞİM ALGISI ÜZERİNE DEĞERLENDİRME
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Year-Number: 2017-12
Language : null
Konu : Yabancı Diller Eğitimi
Abstract
Bu çalışmanın amacı, yabancı dil olarak İngilizce öğreten özel (vakıf, kar amacı gütmeyen) bir üniversitenin hazırlık programında, öz değerlendirme uygulamasının işleyişini ve bu uygulamanın seviyeleri orta düzeyde olan öğrenciler üzerindeki etkisini araştırmaktır. Bu yarı-deneysel araştırma çalışmasında, toplamda 46 öğrenci katılmıştır. Öğrencilerin sekiz haftalık öz değerlendirme skorları, öğretmenin hem deney hem de kontrol grubu için notlandırmaları ve ikinci dilde konuşma motivasyonuna yönelik ön ve son anketi aracılığıyla çalışmanın nicel verisi ve öğrencilerle yapılan sesli düşünme protokolü ile yarı yapılandırılmış görüşmelerden nitel verisi elde edilmiştir. Bu çalışmanın sonunda edinilen bilgiler, öz değerlendirme sürecinin, öğrencilerin yabancı dil öğrenimini geliştirmede ve kendi öğrenme süreçleri hakkında daha bilinçli hale gelmelerine yardımcı olduğunu ve ayrıca öğrencilerin konuşma becerilerine yönelik motivasyonlarını arttırdığını ortaya koymuştur. Deney ve kontrol grupları arasında konuşma becerisi gelişimi bakımından hiçbir anlamlı fark bulunamamasına rağmen, deney grubu kendi içerisinde kayda değer bir ilerme göstermiştir. Çalışmada yer alan öğrenciler, yabancı dil konuşma becerisi hususunda kendilerini geliştirmede ve öğrenimlerinde aktif rol alma konusunda, öz değerlendirme sürecinin teşvik ve motive edici bir rolü olduğunu belirtmişlerdir. Sonuç olarak, bu çalışmanın bulguları yoluyla, öz değerlendirme yönteminin yabancı dilde konuşma becerisi gelişimine yardımcı olan ve bu doğrultuda motivasyonu artıran etkin bir öğrenme stratejisi olarak benimsenebileceği görülmüştür.
Keywords
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the function and impact of self-assessment process on the second language speaking ability of B1 (intermediate) Turkish EFL learners at a language preparatory school of a foundation (non-profit, private) university in Istanbul, Turkey. A sample of 46 students participated in this quasi-experimental research study. Quantitative data was gathered through the students’ eight-week long self-assessment scorings, the teacher’s scorings for experimental and control group and pre-post L2 speaking motivation questionnaire while the qualitative data was obtained from the think aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that the self-assessment process was very helpful for students for gaining awareness of their own learning and improving L2 speaking skills, and also had a positive impact on the motivation for speaking ability. Although no significant difference was found between the experimental and control group in terms of improvement of speaking skills, experimental group still proved a considerable progress. The findings also pointed out that students perceived self-assessment process as an encouraging and engaging way to improve themselves in L2 speaking while taking part in their own learning. Consequently, the results of the study indicated that self-assessment can be utilized as an effective learning strategy promoting L2 speaking skills and motivation in foreign language education.
Keywords
- Defined as an alternative way to assessment, self-assessment is a kind of practice which allows students to evaluate their own learning, gain awareness of their own learning and be able to make reflections on their own learning (Lee, 2008). Hill (2013) puts forth that those who selfassess their learning are responsible and self-controlled students since they are willing to associate their performance and productions with the objectives they are supposed to achieve. They are enthusiastic about planning according to future objectives and eager to perfect the things they get right and correct the things they get wrong. Those students, pointed out by Cassidy (2006) need to be self-aware as much as possible so that they can fully reflect on their own learning and benefit from self-assessment practices.
- Through self-assessment, students are able to gain awareness of their strengths and weaknesses while learning based on predetermined objectives. This feature of self-assessment makes learning active and meaningful for students (Zimmerman, 2002). This awareness gained through self-assessment also contributes to students’ lifelong learning behaviours and academic achievements. Since they adapt the skills of making correct judgments on their own learning and recognizing challenges and problems and taking actions accordingly, students become more proactive. With the help of self-assessment methods, students as self-regulated learners acquire the ability to determine what they have in their background and what they need to learn in order to meet the objectives they are expected to. By this way, students can develop active, reflective and critical thinking skills in their language learning.
- Since self-assessment acts as a promoter for formative assessment, it is pointed out that students acquire the sense of responsibility for their own work and get more engaged with their learning process (Donham, 2010). In contrast to summative assessment which requires passive evaluation based on tests and final products of students and doesn’t allow neither feedback nor interview among students, formative assessment through self-assessment methods and practices becomes more helpful for more purposeful learning in terms of production and improvement in language learning. As students self-assess their performance periodically, teachers have the chance to make some comments on students’ production constructively and provide formative feedback for them. Another benefit that has been observed through the studies conducted on self-assessment methods is that students get accustomed to their own learning process (Andrade & Valtcheva, 2009). In other words, their learning becomes their personal developmental process. Being aware of the objectives they need to achieve, the nature of courses studied, their own improvement and challenges while learning, students can guide themselves through their own findings out of the accumulation of their self-assessment practices.
- Diltz (2006) also proposed that self-assessment practices facilitate the communication among students and between teachers and students. Students who get the habit of monitoring their own learning, recognizing their mistakes and perfecting their speaking ability are the ones who are willing to talk about their experiences in their own learning process. This situation increases the chances for classroom communication among students and encourages the ones who hesitate to get feedback from their teachers about their production. It has been revealed that this classroom communication among students becomes teacher-students talks. That is to say that students who notice their mistakes and become more aware of their learning process ask for more help from their teachers in order to make their learning better. Another important feature that self-assessment includes is that students can feel more comfortable with learning through self-assessment since they are not forced to take standard tests and assessed based on grades they get (Lawson et al., 2012). This also decreases the level of leaning anxiety and brings about more motivational atmosphere for students. With the help of self-assessment practices, assessment becomes a more useful and meaningful tool and students can be assured that their progress and success in language learning is based on their developmental practices instead of final product.
- The essential point in self-assessment for students is to evaluate their own learning, measure it and determine how successful and efficient it is. As long as self-assessment is conducted well, it will be beneficial for students. It is highly important not to have any misleading sides about the quality of self-assessment (Hill, 2013). As it is clear from the sections above, there are some doubts about the validity and the reliability of the selfassessment practices. In other words, whether students are honest enough with their ratings for their own competence and performance or not, how reliable their scores for themselves are is a matter of question. It can be deduced from the nature of self-assessment that self-assessment could serve for educational purposes of EFL classrooms and be beneficial for students on the condition that students are reliable in their assessment. According to Langendyk (2006), unsuccessful students are always prone not to have a sufficient understanding and observation of their own learning process. Most of them think that their proficiency in their learning is always higher than it really is whereas they don’t actually have any slightest idea about what they know and what they need to know. It is also added that students are traditionally taught to evaluate their learning based on their grades instead of having a critical overview for their learning. Thus, they do not have an insight into self-assessment practices for their learning. For this reason, this case brings about the inquiry about the quality and the accuracy of selfassessment practices. Zimmerman (2002) acknowledges that the accuracy of students’ selfassessment is also dependent on teachers’ encouragement. It is stated that very few teachers teach their students how to evaluate and reflect on their own learning and question themselves about their strengths and weaknesses. It is believed that the idea of self-assessment could not be adopted by students if they are not guided sufficiently.
- Once self-assessment and motivation are investigated together, it has been found out that there is a strong relationship between them. For instance, Yashima (2002) found out that communicative language context and self-assessment practices had a considerable influence on the students’ motivation and increased their willingness and enthusiasm for learning English as L2. In addition, AlFallay (2004) concluded that the students’ whose motivation was considerably high did very well on self-assessment process and their ratings were accurate when they were compared to teachers’. Thus, it was implied that self-assessment and motivation had a mutual relationship. In other words, the students were successful while self-assessing due to their high motivation for learning. Their motivation also increased to a great extent due to their accurate practices in self-assessment. It can be implied that when students’ motivation is high, it also affects their desire for learning, their attitudes towards the language they learn, the amount of effort they make, and their courage to face challenges and potential problems during their learning process. Since students act as actual observers of their own learning, they follow selfassessment directions more accurately and become more engaged with their learning objectives, language knowledge and performance. Self-assessment also gives students some time to realize their attitudes towards language learning and change their behaviour if necessary. Since selfassessment provides formative results, students can have sufficient time to observe each stage of their improvement. It is a process which gives students a chance to help their own learning while learning whereas summative grades can only help students after their learning process have been completed.
- As a language teaching trend and approach, communicative language teaching is favoured recently in EFL classrooms. Giving importance on communication, interaction, negotiation and particularly learner-centred classrooms, communicative language teaching is closely associated with self-assessment practices in EFL classrooms and highlights the importance of learner autonomy (Graves, 1996). When the characteristics of autonomous learners are closely examined, it is found out that autonomous learners are able to recognize what they have learnt, to modify their target needs based on the objectives they are expected to achieve, to make a choice between strategies and skills to progress their own learning, and to reflect on themselves, in other words self-assess (Dickinson, 1993). For such autonomous learners and communicative classrooms, self-assessment practices are seen essential in order to provoke learners’ awareness in their learning process. According to Larsen-Freeman (1986), communicative language teaching methods bring about a change on roles of students and teachers. He adds that:
- Based on some empirical studies conducted to shed light on self-assessment in EFL classrooms, it has been found out that self-assessment is a very useful method for learners to make them responsible for their own learning and improve themselves accordingly whereas some of them were objected to the use of self-assessment in EFL classrooms. Based on the explanations revealed by Oscarson (1989) and Nunan (1988), it can be implied that selfassessment in EFL speaking classrooms can be quite effective that it injects confidence and motivation into students to communicate and interact in foreign language. Instilling selfconsciousness in learners, self-assessment can make them knowledgeable about what skills they are learning, how well they are performing, and what they can do more for a better understanding of their goals and objectives. By this way, students can be encouraged to cooperate in-and-out of the classroom and feel more engaged with speaking in their foreign language. However, some other researchers (Brindley, 1989; Cohen, 1994) are concerned about the validity and reliability of self-assessment in EFL classrooms. It is stated that students may not be able to self-assess correctly due to subconscious behaviours even though they are trained for self-assessment beforehand. Some factors such as subjectivity and students’ desire to rate themselves as high as possible for their classroom identities may be thought as a destructive point for the nature and objectives of self-assessment methods. As Cohen (1994) points out, students may not be able to self-assess their learning effectively if they are not given the right criteria and rubric for it. The quality of the training provided and the rubric given to students matter for the appropriate application of self-assessment. Furthermore, Rolfe (1990) argued that students may sometimes take self-assessment more seriously than they are expected to and be harsher on themselves than their teachers while rating their own learning. According to him, self-assessment is not “a reliable indicator of oral ability” (p. 178).
- Due to some conflicts when the findings of the researches mentioned above are compared, it can be deduced that examining communicative performance and speaking abilities of students become a very challenging process for self-assessment practices in speaking classes. The dilemma between assessing the performance on tasks or competence of students may hinder successful applications of self-assessment. There are some ways to overcome those problems and dilemmas and to perfect the process of self-assessment in EFL classrooms according to Nunan (1988). Highlighting that assessment is applied in order to determine if the objectives of a class have been reached at the end of courses, to detect the mistakes while trying to meet objectives and form a relevant guideline for future, he points out that the most significant point to take into consideration for self-assessment purposes and process is that students should be assured to receive sufficient and well-organized training. While building up the habit of selfassessment for students’ own learning, Nunan (1988) suggests that students should be given some specific tasks and activities to assess their performance. By this way, self-assessment stands out as a facilitator for communicative language teaching methods in EFL classrooms.
- It is widely accepted that most of the studies conducted about self-assessment of foreign language skills have revealed that it has not been investigated sufficiently in Turkish EFL context (Banlı, 2014; Orhon, 2016; Ünaldı, 2016; Yıldırım, 2001). There are several studies which have attempted to explore self-assessment within Turkish concept in Turkish institutions.
- Banlı (2014) in her study attempted to explore the role of self-assessment for the improvement of English writing skills and development of students’ awareness in EFL classrooms. Selecting participants from freshman students of Engineering department, the study followed the qualitative case study methods. After students were provided with eight writing sessions prepared by the researcher throughout the study, they were to assess their own performance during those sessions. The data for this study was collected from self-assessment checklist and questionnaire. The results at the end of the study indicated that self-assessment played a very significant role in the improvement of writing skill for EFL learners. It was also found out that self-assessment helped the students to build task awareness for their writing skill as a productive skill. Thus, it was inferred that self-assessment brought more proficient production in EFL classrooms.
- Orhon (2016) aimed to find out whether there was a correlation between students’ self- assessment for blogging and portfolio keeping and their language skills in the process of EFL learning. Lasted for ten weeks, the research study selected its participants among pre- intermediate level students in preparatory program in a state university. The students were divided into two groups: the group which wrote personal blogs and the group which kept portfolios of their own assignments. During those ten weeks, they were also allowed to share their folders with their classmates, get feedback from them and have discussions about their self-assessment and their classmates’ thoughts about it. The data was collected through selfassessment checklist and a questionnaire based on learner autonomy. The students were also invited to the semi-structured interviews later on. The findings of the study indicated that the students in the blog group, in contrast to the portfolio group, improved themselves in terms of developing writing skills and achieving more successful language learning. They also found self-assessment procedures very helpful for themselves.
- Highlighting the shift from teacher-centred classroom environment to learner-centred one, Ünaldı (2016) attempted to find out what the potential effect of self-assessment of foreign language skills was and to what extent it facilitated the proficiency of Turkish students in EFL classrooms. Conducted with freshman students at a state university in Turkey, the study found out that self-assessment had a very significant role in determining the proficiency of Turkish learners. It also revealed that self-assessment helped to create a learner-friendly classroom atmosphere by contributing to learners’ motivation and decreased negative effects of formal assessment. As one of the striking findings was that lower proficiency levels inflated their performance whereas higher proficiency levels underestimated their performance, it was suggested that further studies might take cautions for lower proficiency levels in terms of the accuracy of self-assessment.
- Yıldırım (2001) conducted a study in order to investigate if training students would make any difference to perform self-assessment accurately and to self-assess their own writing. The participants of the study were freshman students who studied Engineering and Science at a private university in Turkey. There were two groups of participants: a treatment group which received a series of training on self-assessment before working on their own written production and a control group which self-assessed their writing skill without any instruction of training beforehand. The treatment group was also given a questionnaire in order to determine whether self-assessment was beneficial for students’ language learning or not. According to the results gathered, there was a consensus that self-assessment made the students more aware of their own learning. In addition, the students in the treatment group had improved themselves a lot in terms of self-assessment within time while the ones in the control group did not rate themselves accurately enough. However, it was discovered that the students in both groups did not show any differences in terms of improving their writing skills.
- The second part of the motivation questionnaire, L2 Speaking Motivational Intensity, aimed to identify what the students did in order to make themselves better in speaking English and what kind of strategies they developed for speaking. The correlation between the pre- and post-test for this section is positive, which was statistically significant (r = .162, n = 24, p = .655). Thus, it cannot be denied that the effect of self-assessment has taken a significant role on students’ motivation for speaking English. As AlFallay (2004) concluded in his study, selfassessment process and L2 speaking motivational intensity of students progress simultaneously. The students who did well in self-assessment had an increasing motivation for speaking their foreign language. Similarly, the students who had an increase in their motivational level became more enthusiastic with their own learning through self-assessment.
- The responses of the students in the third part of the motivation questionnaire, Desire to Learn to Speak English, provided a positive correlation between pre- and post-test (r = .643, n = 24, p = .062). The purpose of this part was to measure how motivated the students were to do more for the sake of speaking English. As the correlation proved, the students believed that their enthusiasm and desire to learn to speak English was increasing. As Lawson et al. (2012) pointed out in their study, students may feel more comfortable with their learning process through selfassessment since they don’t feel the pressure of standard tests and get assessed based on grades they obtain. In line with this argument, self-assessment procedures may be thought to decrease the level of language anxiety and bring about more motivation and desire for learning, particularly L2 speaking.
- them as much as possible. (Student, Interview data, 18th January, 2017)
- 18th January, 2017)
- group, Interview data, 18th January, 2017)
- lot of new words. (Student 13, Experimental group, Interview data, 18th January, 2017)
- Now I am aware. (Student 6, Experimental group, Interview data, 18th January, 2017)
- As presented in the excerpt above, thanks to the self-assessment process, EFL learners may improve their language learning with the help of their increasing motivation and willingness for learning (Lee, 2008). In this research study, it was found out that the students became more engaged with their learning and observe their own performance more closely. They got more motivated to face their lacks and mistakes to fix and perfect them while speaking English. It can be concluded that gaining self-awareness of their own learning and guiding themselves throughout their learning process with the help of self-assessment made students more autonomous learners.
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