Scaffolding Students' Self-Assessment of Their English Essays with Annotated Samples: A Mixed-Methods Study

This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of rubric-referenced student self-assessment (SSA) on students' English essay writing by employing a two-group pre-post-quasi-experimental research design. The method was tested on 54 students at a Chinese university. During a 17-week experiment, the experimental group (EG) received the rubric and annotated samples, while the comparison group (CG) received only the rubric in self-assessment. Data sources included students' scores in the pre-test and post-test and interviews. Quantitative findings indicated that the EG made significantly stronger progress than the CG in the post-test. Interview results suggested that annotation-based rubric-referenced SSA can help students understand the task requirements, initiate their self-regulatory behaviors, and improve their self-assessment confidence, although students still wanted to receive assistance from teachers partly due to the Confucian-heritage culture settings in China. The findings are discussed in terms of the design features of sample annotations within the framework of self-regulated learning (SRL), as well as the implications of using this method in the classroom.