impact of instruction on the efl learners' self-assessment of their argumentative written performance

In recent models of measurement, the border between testing and learning is blurred, and the purpose of assessment is to advocate learning by engaging teachers and learners in the process of evaluation. accordingly, self-assessment has gained substantial attention in more learner-oriented teaching contexts as a process in which the learners appraise their own language skills and proficiency (aryadoust, 2015). hence, the purpose of this mixed-method research was to examine the impact of practice sessions on learners’ self-assessment of their argumentative writing. twenty-eight english major efl learners and two writing instructors took part in this study. the students sat in seven training sessions in which the instructors provided them with instruction on evaluating their own argumentative written performance according to a developed scoring criterion. the learners' self-assessment of their writings was analyzed prior to as well as posterior to the practice period. later the instructors assessed the students’ writings using the same criterion as well. the results of the paired sample t-test reinforced the potential impact of practice sessions on self-assessment of the writings. furthermore, the themes extracted from the inductive analysis of the students’ reflections revealed their positive attitude toward the self-assessment of their writings and its merits on their writing performance although some drawbacks of this type of assessment were emphasized. nevertheless, a level of mismatch still existed between teacher and self-assessment which may cast doubt on the precision of the students' evaluations. the implications of the findings and factors causing this inconsistency in scorings will be discussed.