Understanding learners’ self-assessment and self-feedback on their foreign language speaking performance

Abstract

This study examines university learners’ self-assessment and self-feedback on performance as captured in audio files from a foreign language speaking test. The learners’ were guided to listen, transcribe and analyse their own speaking samples, as well as propose future actions for improvement. Content of learners’ self-feedback was scrutinised against a feedback model, with data coded into various feedback categories as stipulated in the model for analysis. Results indicated that learners’ self-feedback was far reaching and multifaceted. Through self-feedback, learners’ identified discrepancies, answered feed up, feedback and feed forward questions, and inspected performance at task, process, self-regulation and self levels. Much of the feedback involved reflections on past learning history, other areas of learning, deviation of performance from preparation and learner personality traits. The self-feedback went largely beyond most teachers’ feedback capacity and bore great potential for learning and instruction. In particular, contrary to theoretical presumptions, self-level feedback seemed quite enlightening. Whether the observed quality self-feedback could actually help learners improve their performance, however, was not clear. It was suggested that some teachers’ time and effort be directed to the endeavour of facilitating learners’ self-assessment and self-feedback. Learners’ self-feedback capability should also be explored further in the development of relevant pedagogies and theories.

Keywords:

• self-assessment
• self-feedback
• foreign language speaking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, Republic of China [grant number 102-2410-H-004-070].