Exploring Self-assessment Literacy and Its Impact on Writing Performance: A Case Study of EFL Students
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This case study investigates the self-assessment literacy (SAL) of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students and its potential influence on their writing performance. The study focuses on six participants, divided into two groups: three with high levels of writing performance and three with low levels. This study exploited an interview protocol guided by Guo et al.’s (2021) SAL model to reveal students’ literacy in self-assessment, self-assessment checklist adapted from Nimehchisalem (2014), and documentation of students writing performance to collect the data. The study examined whether there is a difference in SAL between the two performance groups and whether SAL impacted their respective writing performances. The findings descriptively showed that the students with high and low writing performance mostly had perceived similar concept of self-assessment comprehension compared to self-assessment implementation, self-assessment interpretation and critical engagement with self-assessment. High-performing students engage more in self-assessment, especially in application, interpretation, and critical engagement. Low-performing writers, in contrast, demonstrate some ability in interpretation but lack application and critical engagement. In addition, self-assessment comprehension is not strongly associated with either group. This suggests that critical engagement and application skills may contribute to the students cognitive and metacognitive growth for their writing performance. These findings may inform writing teachers in designing more targeted interventions to enhance both SAL and self-assessment practice to foster improved writing skills among EFL learners.
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