View Content #17167

by Krystal Sundstrom, Online Learning Specialist

                 Self-assessment offers learners the opportunity to exercise more control over their learning process, maximizing their motivation and performance. While many learners might not be familiar with a formal process of self-assessment, they often intuitively evaluate their performance and seek ways to improve.

                 For example, my 12-year old son often evaluates his performance in various athletic endeavors. The other day, he ran into the house from shooting baskets outside. He gleefully shouted, “Hey mom, I went from a 1 to a 2 on my right-handed lay-ups!”

                  “Great!” I said. “2 out of how many?” I asked, wondering which particular performance scale he based his self-assessment on. He answered “10,” then went on to explain that he was an eight or nine with his left-handed lay-ups, since he’s left-handed. Although he recognized he had a long way to go on right-handed lay-ups, he was excited and motivated by his sense of improvement. I probed further by asking him what he could do to improve his skills, and we discussed his specific goals for this season.

                  Whether it’s sports or language learning, we all have an innate desire to learn, to move forward, and to grow beyond our current capacities. When it comes to classroom instruction, educators can guide and support learners throughout the self-assessment process by emphasizing opportunities for reflective learning and providing rich feedback regarding their progress. Research has long pointed toward the significant benefits of formative assessment and feedback, with these practices resulting in greater learning gains than most other instructional interventions (Black & Wiliam, 1998a).

                  Researchers have identified several key components that constitute an effective formative assessment approach. Learner involvement in the assessment process is essential. Learners can set learning goals and think through the effort and actions it will take to achieve those goals. Along the way, they can evaluate their performance, reflect on their success and identify areas for improvement. Another important aspect of effective formative assessment is that assessment data informs both instruction and support, and provides information about which areas to emphasize. For example, a teacher may notice general trends, such as students indicating that they feel more comfortable with reading tasks than speaking tasks. Based on that data, teachers may decide to implement more interactive speaking activities in the classroom to provide more practice opportunities.

                  The final component of effective formative assessment involves feedback, and high quality feedback can have a huge impact on student performance (Sadler, 1989). In order to reap the benefits of this process, learners should first understand the expected learning goals and standards. Teachers can emphasize concrete learning objectives during instruction, such as LinguaFolio Can Do Statements, to provide clear descriptions of expected language proficiency. Teachers can also share models or exemplars of language proficiency, to further demonstrate expected outcomes.

                  The learners then evaluate themselves to determine how their current level of performance compares to their goals. Frequent self-assessment allows students to identify where they need to focus their attention and make adjustments. The final piece of effective feedback involves implementing strategies to close the gap between learners’ current performance and their goals. Teachers can support this process by discussing various learning strategies, and by providing clear and timely suggestions on how learners can improve their performance. By implementing formative assessment approaches, teachers can support language learners in becoming more autonomous and achieving higher levels of language proficiency. 

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in education, 5(1), 7-74.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Granada Learning.

Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional science, 18(2), 119-144.