Developmental Potential of Self-Assessment Reports For High School Students' Writing Skills:A Qualitative Study

Though many studies have been conducted on the effects of self-assessment on l2 learning over the last decade, none has investigated how selfassessment reports lead to improving l2 learning. thus, this study aims to disclose how self-assessment reports improve iranian high school students' writing skills and their perceptions of the effectiveness of self-assessment reports in cultivating writing skills. for this purpose, the researchers selected one intact grade 11 class (n = 21) at shahed public high school in borujerd, iran. during the instruction lasting 15 sessions held twice a week, a self-assessment report was designed based on nunan's (2004) template and given to the students to assess their writings weekly. then, a focus group interview was run with six students. findings documented a significant improvement in the students' writing skills in terms of content, language, organization, and task requirements. additionally, the focus group interview results yielded four themes: raising students' awareness of evaluation criteria, making students more self-regulated, letting students have a voice in their academic destiny, and increasing students' motivation to write. in light of the findings, a number of conclusions are drawn, and several implications are put forward.