The common european framework and the european language portfolio: Involving learners’ judgments in the assessment process

Abstract

Self-assessment as an alternative technique for traditional assessment has come into prominence in order to provide additional insight into foreign language learning and teaching due to the European Language Portfolio which uses the Common European Framework as a criterion for the language competence. The European Language Portfolio is a document which puts the standards for this aspect of education and files individual information in terms of learners’language experience and knowledge. Accordingly, this study aims to scrutinize to what extent elementary level learners’ self-assessment concerning listening/speaking comprehension skills carried out within the scope of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is congruent with their listening/speaking actual performance. Therefore, a prep school was selected as the scope of research, since it has started to adapt the English language teaching curriculum, syllabuses, instruction methods and assessment in line with the Common European Framework for the teaching of English as a foreign language. Fifty preparatory school students who enrolled at Elementary English preparatory class at the School of Foreign Languages in Uludag University were administered The Self-Assessment Checklist of Common European Language Portfolio with 24 “can-do” statements related to listening and speaking skills. The quantitative data obtained from the checklist with a Cronbach’s alpha score of α =.87 were analyzed through descriptive statistics such as mean and frequency results and the Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to find out whether there was a significant correlation between learners’ self-assessment of their listening and speaking skills and their academic success in these skills. The results revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between the participants’ listening proficiency scores and their speaking proficiency scores and also there is a strong positive relationship between participants’ listening proficiency scores and spoken interaction component. The findings were discussed via the interview results obtained from the teacher interview to triangulate the result of the quantitative data.