Abstract:
This study focuses on the relationship between lower-intermediate level EFL learners’ metacognitive awareness and accuracy in self-assessment of a speaking test. We tried to raise the learners’ metacognitive awareness through practice in goal-setting and planning. To do so, 103 lower-intermediate level students took a pretest of speaking, completed a metacognitive awareness questionnaire, and had an immediate recall interview. Next, they were divided into 2 groups and attended a course in which the students in 1 group received goal-setting and planning treatments. After administration of the posttests, the findings revealed that the goal-setting and planning treatment led the learners to gain higher levels of metacognitive awareness, t(101) = 2.45, p =. 019, and this increased awareness could increase their accuracy in self-assessment. Such findings indicate that presenting the objectives of different tasks to learners and goal-setting can be applied in language learning classes to enhance their awareness and improve their self-assessment skills.
Machine summary:
Impact of Metacognitive Awareness on Self-Assessment Skills of Lower-Intermediate Level EFL Students Fatemeh Hemmati1& Amirali Mohammadkhani2 1Payame Noor University of Tehran, fatemehhemmati2002@yahoo.
com Received: 29/09/2014 Accepted: 07/06/2015 Abstract This study focuses on the relationship between lower-intermediate level EFL learners’ metacognitive awareness and accuracy in self-assessment of a speaking test.
Such findings indicate that presenting the objectives of different tasks to learners and goal-setting can be applied in language learning classes to enhance their awareness and improve their self-assessment skills.
Heilenman (1990) argued about the importance of self-assessment stating that tests can measure a small portion of learners’ language use, and learners themselves can be aware of a wide range of their resources.
Mori, Sato, and Shimizu (2007), reflecting on studies in those years, claimed that individuals’ choice of strategies for a challenging learning task reflects their views on language learning, in general, and the nature of a given task, in particular (Benson & Lor, 1999; Cotterall, 1995; Sakui & Gaies, 1999; Wenden, 1998; Yang, 1999).
Finally, in a comprehensive study on the effect of goal-setting and self- assessment, Kato (2009) provided these two techniques to groups of Japanese language learners in elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels.
153 1: experimental group, 2: control group, 3: teacher-assessment, 4: self-assessment Another instrument used to collect the data was the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994) which consisted of 52 items, measuring different aspects of metacognitive awareness of the learners.
About the second and the third questions, the results showed that the learners who were metacognitively aware were more accurate in self-assessing their performance in speaking tests and the goal-setting activity improved other components of their metacognitive awareness.