Improving Speaking Skill Through Self-Assessment Technique in A2 level Students

Abstract

Have you ever considered the power of the speaking skill? Speaking is a gateway to express thoughts and connect with others. In today's globalized world, speaking skills are present in international mobility, admission to higher education, employment, and numerous facets of daily life (Fan & Yan, 2020). Despite spending over twelve years studying English, the graduated high school students from a public secondary school in Cotocollao are struggling to acquire proficient spoken English skills, including good pronunciation, fluency, and subject-verb agreement. This challenge arose because the learners did not receive activities that offer sufficient input, and these students had only three to two hours of English per week, which was insufficient to develop their English-speaking skills. Moreover, Self -Assessment and technological tools improve speaking skills since they give students the opportunity to enhance their confidence fluency for speaking tasks (Bonilla, 2022). It fosters a clear mindset for academic and personal growth. For this reason, teachers should implement self-assessment by designing activities with comprehensible input and providing students with a checklist accompanied by a rubric for educators. This aims to help learners to understand the evaluation criteria. Sintayani and Adnyayanti (2022) mentioned that self-assessment in speaking develops students’ progress, so student can take an active role in their learning process. This research helped the investigator to verify how self-assessment technique contributed to the progress of graduated high school students, developing speaking fluency and coherent structure in subject verb agreement. Thus, this study addressed the following research question: To what extend will self-assessment technique help the A2 level students to improve their speaking fluency skill? And What are the students’ opinions of using the checklist?