Exploring University Students' Self-Assessment Of English Reading Abilities

In recent years self-assessment has gained much attention owing to growing emphasis on learner independence and learner autonomy. As emphasis in university education has switched from teaching to learning and from teacher management to student self-direction, interest has mounted in the educational advantage of students assessing their own work (self-assessment). Self-assessment will help students to set goals and thus to learn for themselves. It is considered one of the most important skills that students require for effective learning and for future professional development and for lifelong learning. In the past years, relevant studies have been done in foreign countries to assess the reliability of students'self-assessment, to identify the relationship between self-assessment and language proficiency, and to identify students'response to and views of self-assessment process. However, the existing studies have revealed different results and few studies have been done on students'self-assessment of their reading ability domestically. The present study is conducted to know more about Chinese students'self-assessment, especially in reading ability. Can students make reliable self-assessment of their English reading ability? Which type of task can best help students make reliable self-assessment? Is the students'self-assessment affected by their language proficiency? What are the students'reactions to and views of the self-assessment process? The present thesis endeavors to answer such questions. It starts with literature review on relevant studies in self-assessment as well as the findings of such studies. Based on the research findings of such studies, the author conducted a self-assessment study on students'reading ability. 97 second-year college students in Hubei College of Education participated in this study. First the students used the reading ability questionnaire (Appendix I) to make a self-assessment of their reading abilities. Then the reading comprehension test was conducted to assess their reading abilities. Correlation study was used to look at the relationship between self-assessment ratings and objective exams and One-way ANOVO was used to examine whether the students'self-assessment was affected by their language proficiency. At last, qualitative data about the students'response to and views of the self-assessment process was collected through the second questionnaire (Appendix II). Based on the information and data collected, it is concluded that: (1)Generally most of the students can make a relatively reliable self-assessment of their reading ability and the more specific task can better help students to make reliable self-assessment of their reading ability. (2) There exists a close relationship between the students'self-assessment and language proficiency. (3)Most students hold positive views about the self-assessment process. Finally, teaching implications are suggested and the limitations of the research and suggestions for future research are given.