Self-assessment on Students' Oral Interaction and its Implications in the Development of Accuracy

Abstract

Teaching practices in education have changed along the years. This is even more significant since the lockdown caused by the global pandemic. Covid-19 has forced teachers and students to adapt their practices to the current situation in a record time (Bonal & González, 2020; Damşa et al., 2021). Around the world, many countries have chosen virtual education to substitute face to face interaction and continue with the teaching- learning process. Regarding the foreign language acquisition field in this context, there were some challenges. From the lack of appropriate technological resources required to its development (Tokarieva et al., 2021) to the necessity of the development of learners’ autonomy and deep processes of metacognition due to the nature of learning in virtual environments (Gulbinskienė et al., 2017). Certainly, keeping in mind Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Azimova (2019) argued that students should be provided chances to use the target language and realize on their own what to say according to the situation. One option is teaching students to evaluate their own performance. Burns (2010) claimed that students tended to undervalue assessing their own performance because they do not know how to do it. That is the case of four students of second and fourth level of English (B1) of two public universities in Riobamba, Chimborazo province, who are taking online classes and have shown accuracy problems in their oral interaction with their teacher and peers. They perceived self-assessment as a non- convincing source to enhance their process of learning due to their lack of knowledge about its application.