Data for FLA article Self-assessment: How Reliable is it in Assessing Oral Proficiency over Time?

Abstract: Second language (L2) learners can assess their oral skills with some accuracy. A question is whether learners can reliably use self-assessment to track their language gains over time. During the spring of two subsequent years, 80 university L2-Chinese learners completed an oral-skills self-assessment based on the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-do Statements (2015), and took an ACTFL OPIc. Results were compared to see how accurate the self-assessments were and to determine if the students’ self-assessment skills improved. Most students’ OPIc gains were reflected in their self-assessment gains; meanwhile, learners tended to under-assess rather than over-assess their skills. Students at the Novice and Advanced proficiency levels were more accurate self-assessors than were Intermediate-level learners. There was no difference in self-assessment-rating accuracy between Years 1 and 2. The findings suggest that self-assessment based on the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-do Statements is valuable for low-stakes assessments, for example, to monitor students’ proficiency gains and to globally track the way in which language programs promote proficiency growth.