Advances in Language and Literary Studies - Vol. 5 No. 1 - February 2014 - A Self-assessment Checklist for Undergraduate Students’ Argumentative Writing

Oct 15, 2026

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With a growing emphasis on students’ ability to assess their own written works in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses, self-assessment checklists are regarded as useful tools. Such checklists help learners diagnose weaknesses and improve argumentative writing performance. The paper develops a self-assessment checklist for undergraduate ESL students, presents related literature and theories, describes the checklist, and discusses theoretical and practical implications for ESL writing classes. Further refinement is proposed via focus group studies with lecturers and students.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Self-Assessment Writing Checklists

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 Vol. 5 No. 1; February 2014 Copyright © Australian International Academic Centre, Australia A Self-assessment Checklist for Undergraduate Students’ Argumentative Writing Vahid Nimehchisalem (Corresponding author) English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya [Email: nimechie@gmail.com](Email: nimechie@gmail.com) David Yoong Soon Chye English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya Sheena Kaur A/P Jaswant Singh English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya Siti Zaidah Zainuddin English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya Sara Norouzi English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya Sheren Khalid English Language Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n. 1p.65 URL: [http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.1p.65](http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.1p.65) Received: 01/01/2014 Accepted: 28/02/2014 Abstract With a growing emphasis on students ’ ability to assess their own written works in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses, self-assessment checklists are today regarded as useful tools. These checklists can help learners diagnose their own weaknesses and improve their writing performance. This necessitates development of checklists that guide the learners in assessing their own writing. In this study, a self-assessment checklist was developed for undergraduate students in an ESL context to help them with their argumentative essays. This paper presents the related literature and theories, based on which the checklist was developed. The checklist is described and its potential theoretical and practical implications in ESL writing classes are discussed. Further research is necessary to refine the checklist through focus group studies with lecturers and students. Keywords: English as a second language writing, self-assessment, checklists, argumentative writing 1. Introduction Despite their importance, few self-assessment checklists are available to help university undergraduate students specifically in writing argumentative essays. The existing self-assessment checklists designed for ESL argumentative writing do not seem to be able to help these students improve their argumentative writing skills. One of the few selfassessment checklists tested for their effectiveness is presented by Honsa (2013) . The checklist was generic and was accompanied by a guidance sheet. Although Honsa (2013) reports that the checklist helped the participants in the experimental group gain higher scores, she fails to mention the statistical significance of this difference. Moreover, nothing is mentioned on the validation procedure of this checklist which is also the case for most of the checklists available in the literature. Most of these checklists are generic and thus are not sensitive to the features that are specific to argumentative writing. Additionally, most checklists have not been developed on sound theoretical frameworks which can undermine their construct validity. For example, as it is the case with Honsa’s (2013) checklist, it was adapted from a textbook by Oshima and Hogue (1997), who do not provide any theoretical framework based on which they selected its sub-constructs. It has been discovered that learners’ awareness of specific schematic structures helps them improve in their writing (Beck & Jeffry, 2007) . This way, they become familiar with the different parts of a piece of writing, the way these parts are meaningfully interrelated, and the way they can be organized to fulfill a certain purpose. Research has revealed a change in the genre of writing will lead to variations in schematic structure (Lock & Lockhart, 1999) . As a result several

FAQs

Why are self-assessment checklists considered useful in ESL writing courses?

They help learners diagnose weaknesses in their own writing and improve overall writing performance, supporting students’ ability to assess their written work.

What gap does the introduction identify in existing ESL argumentative writing checklists?

Existing checklists are described as generic, not sensitive to features specific to argumentative writing, and often not grounded in sound theoretical frameworks that would support construct validity.

How was the self-assessment checklist developed in this study?

A checklist prototype was developed for undergraduate ESL students in an argumentative essay context, based on related literature and theories related to language competence, language assessment, and argumentation.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Terk