The Intervention of Criteria-Referenced Self-Assessment in Developing the Accuracy, Lexical Resource, and Coherence of Advanced Iranian EFL Learners’ Writing: Shared vs. Independent Tasks

A controversial issue in language teaching is the extent to which engaging learners in the learning process may enhance various aspects of learners’ writing. The current study set out to examine the impact of employing evaluation rubrics as self-assessment devices on advanced EFL learners’ writing features. The current study probed the interactive effect of criteria-referenced self-assessment and task type on the accuracy, lexical resources, and coherence. The participants included 60 advanced EFL learners distributed into two experimental groups (30 male and female learners each). The instruments were two writing tasks as pre-test and post-test, assessed based on IDP rubrics evaluating lexical resources, task response, grammatical range and accuracy, and cohesion and coherence. Two-way ANCOVA was administered to analyze the data. The findings revealed significantly more accurate and coherent writing of the criteria-referenced self-assessment group compared to the teacher-assessment group with no significant difference in lexical resources. Moreover, the findings indicated that the participants performed significantly better on shared tasks compared to independent tasks. However, task and assessment types were found to have no significant interactive effect on the writing features in question. The findings emphasize the practical benefits of criteria-referenced self-assessment and shared tasks in promoting Iranian advanced EFL learners’ writing accuracy and coherence. The implications will be discussed.