A Study Of The Application Of Self-assessment To EFL Reading Teaching In High School

English has always been a main subject in high school and the importance of English reading is reflected in the large proportion of reading in the NMET. However, the current reading situations of the high school students are far from satisfactory. Many learners are tired with the reading passages and are nearly giving up. The main reason could be the excessive use of summative assessment, mostly tests and the negligence of students' learning process in reading. The application of students' self-assessment, peer feedback and teacher assessment to the students' learning process are suggested in the newly-issued Senior High School English Curriculum Standards. Therefore, in this thesis, the student-oriented assessment, namely, self-assessment is employed in students' reading.The present study introduced self-assessment to 129 Grade 1 students in Class 1 and Class 2 in a newly-built senior high school in Fengcheng City, Jiangxi Province. As a brave try in the reading assessment, it is hoped to bring great benefit to the learners' English reading ability. Self- assessment forms for reading passages in text book and reading comprehension exercises in English weekly were used to conduct the experiment. Quantitative data were collected from the questionnaire of the students' attitudes to self-assessment process, the questionnaire of the participants' reading motivation before and after the experiment, and the participants' scores on both pre-test and post-test. It addresses the following three research questions:1) what are the students' attitudes to self-assessment process? 2) Can the self-assessment increase the reading motivation of the senior school students? 3) Can the self-assessment improve the reading ability of the senior school students?Based on the analyses and discussion of the experimental data, the findings are as follows: Firstly, the participants held a positive attitude towards the implementation of self-assessment, thinking that the self-assessment is beneficial for their reading and the process can help improve their reading ability. Secondly, implementing self-assessment has a positive effect on the students' intrinsic reading motivation andexpectancy for success reading, though in a moderate way. The students' extrinsic reading motivation has decreased a little after the experiment, though again in a moderate way. The mean score of reading importance stayed high in the whole experiment process. It showed that the students valued English reading and gradually developed an inner incentive to English reading and started to challenge some difficult reading materials. Thirdly, the implementation of self-assessment in students' reading did enhance the students' reading ability. But there was no significant difference between the control group and experimental group in the post-test. The control group improved their reading ability after four-month reading instruction and practices, but its progress seemed smaller than that of experimental group who had experienced the self-assessment.The study revealed that implementing self-assessment in High School English reading is helpful and feasible. In order to conduct more effective self-assessment experiment, it is better for the participants to get more formal training and practice before the real experiment. The teacher should have relative knowledge and theory about self-assessment, and have more practice. Besides, an appropriate experimental environment is a must and the teacher's feedback and encouragement to the participants are necessary in carrying out self-assessment.