Effects of Using Self-assessment on English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) Students’ Self-efficacy Beliefs and Writing Improvement

Abstract

Self-assessment and self-efficacy are two important strands in relation to instruction in EFL writing classrooms. Results from previous studies have generally suggested that self-assessment benefits writing performance, nurtures students’ writing self-efficacy beliefs, and supports autonomous learning (Boud, 1995; Earl, 2013; Harris & Brown, 2018). Similarly, self-efficacy has been shown to be a strong predictor of academic achievement in the fields of education and educational psychology (Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012). The close correlation between self-efficacy and self-assessment was also identified by many studies (e.g., Pajares & Valiante, 2006; Van Reybroeck, Penneman, Vidick, & Galand, 2017). However, the strong global endorsement of self-assessment and self-efficacy over the past two decades has not been realised in EFL writing classrooms, especially in the tertiary context of China. There is minimal research on how engagement in self-assessment affects Chinese undergraduate students’ self-efficacy and writing performance. The present study was designed to address the above-mentioned research gap by adopting quantitative and qualitative approaches, with the overarching purpose to implement a self-assessment-based intervention in Chinese tertiary EFL writing classes to foster confident, competent and autonomous EFL writers. Overall, 668 students and two lecturers from 15 medium to large scale universities participated in different parts of this study. A total of 92 English major sophomore students from four intact classes and two English lecturers from a Chinese university participated in the main study for approximately four months. Two of the four classes formed the intervention group (51 students), and the other two formed the comparison group (41 students). Students from the intervention group were provided with 16 weeks of self-assessment intervention, which was developed by the researcher, whereas those from the comparison group used peer-assessment in their usual English writing classes. Pre-and post-questionnaires, writing tasks, self-assessment of writing tasks, learning journals, semi-structured interviews, and class observation were utilised to collect data from student participants. Before and after the intervention, all students’ self-efficacy for self-assessment of writing and writing performance were explored and the inter-relationships between these variables investigated. Students’ perception of, and adaptation to, self-assessment of writing was also explored during the intervention to provide a better understanding of Chinese students’ experiences in self-assessment of writing. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to gain a clearer understanding of the implementation of self-assessment in EFL writing classrooms. The quantitative results show that Chinese EFL learners held a medium level of self-efficacy for self-assessment of writing, and their self-efficacy levels were enhanced after the self-assessment intervention. The results also indicate that, in the intervention group, there was a large increase in students’ writing performance not only holistically but also in individual linguistic measures such as accuracy and fluency. In addition, both groups of students showed relatively lower rating accuracy in self-assessing individual writing dimensions compared with their overall writing performance. For the intervention group in the pre-test, although moderate to high degrees of correlation were found between students’ self-efficacy for self-assessment of writing and dimensions of writing performance, around half of the correlations lost their statistical significance in the post-test. The qualitative findings reveal how students enhanced their self-efficacy for self-assessment of writing, writing performance, and rating accuracy throughout the intervention. Additionally, the findings document students’ perception of, and adaptation to, self-assessment of writing and the writing rubric. The factors that may influence students’ self-assessment of writing practices, such as individual language proficiency, former teachers’ feedback approaches, and cultural norms are also discussed. This study contributes to research on self-assessment and self-efficacy in the EFL writing domain by yielding empirical evidence and pedagogical guidance for educators to embed self-assessment in their own contexts. In addition, by focusing on students’ experience in self-assessment of writing, this study has generated insights into how students perceived self-assessment of writing and identified more effective approaches to conduct self-assessment. Theoretical and methodological contributions, practical implications, research limitations, as well as suggestions for future research are also discussed.