Students’ Perception of the Effects of Using Self-assessment and Peer-assessment in Promoting Learner Autonomy in Speaking Skills

This study aims to examine the effects of self-assessment and peer assessment on learner autonomy development and the different effects between the two kinds of assessment practices in language use, focusing on EFL speaking skills. Eighty-eight first-year non-English majors at VNU-HCM University of Science taking a fifteen-week general English course participated in the study and were put in two groups: experimental 1 (n=49); and experimental 2 (n=39). The participants in experimental group 1 assessed their own work, whilst those in experimental group 2 assessed their peers' work. Quantitative data was collected from students' pre-and post-test questionnaires. Three key findings were revealed. First, through the use of self-assessment, dimensions of initiating, monitoring, and evaluating students' learner autonomy were significantly enhanced. Second, the implementation of peer assessment also considerably promoted students' learner autonomy dimensions by initiating, monitoring, and evaluating. Third, although both self-assessment and peer assessment developed these four learner autonomy dimensions, there is a small difference between the two kinds of assessment on dimension initiating. The effects of self-assessment on dimension initiating surpassed that of peer assessment on dimension initiating.