Self-Assessment to improve speaking skills: a brief action research

• Autor(a) principal: Moncayo Mendoza , María Paola
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Ramirez Avila, María Rossana
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Sapienza (Curitiba)
• Texto Completo: https://journals.sapienzaeditorial.com/index.php/SIJIS/article/view/492
• topic: Autoavaliação, habilidades de fala, autoconfiança; Self-assessment, speaking skills, self-confidence, english EFL, research action; Autoevaluación, habilidades para hablar, confianza en sí mismo, inglés, investigación acción

The present study aims to demonstrate that “Self-assessment” technique applied with EFL (English as a foreign language) students can improve their speaking skills as well as their self-confidence when speaking. The research was conducted with 34 young male students from the Ecuadorian Navy from Ecuador. The students were trained on how to self-assess their speaking skills focused on the content, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and interaction. They self-assessed using a checklist and the teacher used a rubric to evaluate them. The design of the research was applied through a pretest and a posttest. Between the pretest and a posttest, the researcher implemented an innovation called “The Backward Design” to help students focus on the target, which is having a casual conversation in pairs about daily topics in English with self-confidence. A mixed method was used since the data collected during this study were quantitative and qualitative. The results compare the grades from the pretest and the posttest to determine if self-assessment improved or did not improve the students’ speaking skills and their self-confidence at the end of the innovation. Finally, an argument at the end of the research takes place to discuss the similarities and differences with other investigations.