Self-Assessment as a Second Language Placement Instrument

Although self-assessment has been prevalent for a number of years in such fields as psychology, sociology, business, and so on, its use in second language teaching/learning has remained rather rare. Whether this situation stems from skepticism about students' capacity to provide meaningful information about their ability to use the language or from an inappropriate use of self-assessment is difficult to assess. This article reports a sequence of experiments leading to the use of self-assessment as a placement test. These experiments dealt with such questions as, Do students have the ability to meaningfully evaluate their own performance? Does the type of instrument used effect that ability? Can students be satisfactorily placed by self-assessment results alone? The conclusion is that at least under the conditions described, self-assessment must be considered a very valuable tool as a placement instrument.