Dynamic Self-assessment: Is it an Effective Task for Pragmatic Development and Metapragmatic Awareness?

This paper aimed to investigate the effects of self-assessment-based instruction on the acquisition of speech acts of suggestion, complaint, and request. Its second aim was to investigate the accuracy of students’ pragmatic rating as measured against teacher rating using WDCT. The participants were 30 university students taking their general English course. In both dynamic self-assessment and comparison groups, each session the teacher taught a conversation containing a speech act and had the students completed a WDCT. The results of the study demonstrated that, despite the self-assessment group's better performance on most of the items in WDCT, their overall score did not significantly exceed that of the comparison group. In addition, the comparison group's self- assessment manifested a higher inter-rate reliability with teacher rating. These findings cast doubt on the effect of dynamic self-assessment as an effective task for pragmatic acquisition and meta pragmatic awareness.