Alternative Assessment in the EFL-Classroom:

Self-Assessment in a Bilingual Programme of a German Grammar School

Petra Bosenius (Cologne, Germany)

Abstract (English)

Undoubtedly, self-assessment is one of the key elements of alternative assessment in any EFL-classroom. Alternative assessment is meant to complement teachers’ grading procedures in student-centred learning contexts. Usually, it does not replace the practice of teachers giving grades. Rather, it serves as a diagnostic tool for teachers and learners to improve both teaching and learning. Self-assessment grids are to be found in almost all course books used for teaching English as a foreign language in Germany. These grids either refer to specific tasks and activities carried out in the course of a teaching unit, or they are used to help pupils reflect upon their learning outcome after several years of schooling. Self-assess­ment thus bears the chance to enhance pupils’ language learning awareness which is needed in order for them to become autonomous language learners. The present article traces the development of self-assessment as an innovative concept in English Language Teaching at German schools and then discusses, as an example, the results of a self-assessment question­naire put to use in the bilingual branch of an 11th grade at a German grammar school. The results prove self-assessment to be a useful tool of alternative, learner-centred assessment in the EFL-classroom, provided it is consistently integrated into everyday lessons of English. 
Keywords: Alternative assessment, self-assessment, evaluation, learner autonomy, bilingual
                 teaching and learning

Abstract (Deutsch)

Zweifellos ist die Selbsteinschätzung eines der Schlüsselelemente alternativer Leistungs­beurteilung in jeglichem Englischunterricht. Alternative Leistungsbeurteilung ergänzt gemeinhin die Beurteilung durch Lehrerinnen und Lehrer in schülerorientierten Lernkon­texten. Dabei ersetzt sie nicht die Praxis der Notenvergabe durch Lehrerinnen und Lehrer. Vielmehr dient sie Lehrerinnen und Lehrern wie auch Schülerinnen und Schülern als diagnostisches Mittel, um sowohl das Lehren als auch das Lernen zu verbessern. Selbst­beurteilungsraster finden sich in Deutschland in fast allen Lehrwer­ken für den Englisch­unterricht. Diese Raster beziehen sich entweder auf spezifische Aufgaben und Akti­vitäten, die im Verlauf einer Unterrichtseinheit gelöst bzw. ausgeführt wurden, oder sie werden zur Anwendung gebracht, um Schülerinnen und Schülern zu helfen, ihre Lerner­gebnisse nach mehreren Jahren des Schulunterrichts zu reflektieren. Selbstbeurteilung birgt somit die Chance, die Sprachlernbewusstheit der Schülerinnen und Schüler zu fördern, die vonnöten ist, damit sie autonome Sprachlerner werden. Im vorliegenden Artikel wird die Entwicklung der Selbsteinschätzung als innovatives Kon­zept im Eng­lischunterricht an deutschen Schu­len nachgezeichnet, und anschließend wer­den exemplarisch die Ergeb­nisse eines Selbst­einschätzungsbogens diskutiert, welcher im bilingualen Zweig eines 11. Schuljahrs an einem deutschen Gymnasium erprobt wurde. Die Ergebnisse belegen, dass die Selbst­einschätzung ein nützliches Mittel alternativer, lernerzentrierter Leistungsbeur­teilung im Englischunterricht darstellt, vorausgesetzt sie wird durchgängig in den alltägli­chen Engli­schunterricht integriert. 
Stichwörter: Alternative Leistungsbeurteilung, Selbsteinschätzung, Evaluation,
                   Lernerautonomie, bilinguales Lehren und Lernen

1 Alternative Assessment in English Language Teaching

1.1 A Note on Terminology

Most of the time the terms ‘assessment’ and ‘evaluation’ are being used to denote the proce­dure of estimating or judging the learning outcome of one or several pupils in a school con­text. Clearly, the former is less judgemental than the latter, and both of them might be taken as a basis for grading pupils’ achie­vements at school. ‘Evaluation’ is sometimes considered to be the wider term as Genesee & Upshur (1996: 3) point out: “There is more to evalu­ation than grading students and deciding whether they should pass or fail.” Thus, in addi­tion to assessing pupils’ achievements when finishing a particular teaching unit, the effectiveness of teaching methods or materials applied might also be subject to evaluative statements. Further, other variables, such as the type and quality of discourse produced in an EFL-class­room as well as teacher and learner satisfaction might be evaluated. Evaluation can even move beyond the school context, when proficiency testing is used to gain insight into pupils’ knowledge of a foreign language by means of large-scale testing formats (cf. Weigle 2002: 58ff on writing assessment). In the course of the present paper, the terms ‘alternative assessment’ and ‘self-assessment’ are employed to signify diagnostic measures related to student-centred class­rooms that enable pupils to reflect upon their learning English as a foreign language. At times, as might be the case with regard to portfolios, alternative forms of assessment may be taken into account by teachers when giving grades. However, this is rather the exception to the rule, which usually says that alternative forms of assess­ment serve the purpose of strengthening students’ language learning aware­ness viz. their learner autonomy.

1.2 The Emergence of Alternative Assessment

Each testing procedure in English Language Teaching (ELT) mirrors the under­lying teaching methodology which is itself connected to a notion of how second or foreign language learning takes place. In the wake of a learning theory focusing on habit formation the discrete-point tests of the 1960s appeared to be an adequate way of assessing pupils’ knowledge of single grammatical items that they had learned mostly via pattern drill. Communicative competence as defined in the 1970s greatly exceeded the reproduction of such individual lan­guage items. As language learning was considered to be language use, pupils were taught to ‘get their messages across’ by employing speech func­tions in interactions with their teachers and fellow students. ‘Context’ became the buzz-word of the day. It was firstly created by simpler picture stories that were the basis of integrative testing and later amounted to communicative teaching and testing formats in which pupils’ language use was expected to be real – albeit in a school context. Hence, simulation and role play became prominent teaching and testing practices. In addition, pragmatic and performance testing that originated in vocational training focused on real-life situa­tions that also con­sidered situational, affective, and cultural aspects of a communicative situation (Shohamy 1998). 
 

Today’s situation of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign lan­guage at school in Germany is characterized by several instructional prin­ciples, i.e. action-, production-, and process-orientation that mainly aim at assisting pupils in successfully solving complex tasks related to the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing as well as to the skill of mediation. Language learning is seen as a highly individualized process that is supported by teachers as facilitators who primarily provide their pupils with meaningful input and apply adequate scaffolding techniques to enable them to construct meanings on that basis. As a result, alternative assessment comprises similarly individualized pro­cedures of assessing pupils’ performance, e.g. self-assessment, peer assess­ment, rating scales, rubrics, questionnaires, and port­folios. Such formats, that are mostly, but not exclusively applied by pupils themselves, are consid­ered to serve as complements to teacher-centred grading procedures. How­ever, they also present the risk that teachers refrain from applying them because they doubt the effectiveness of such metacognitive ventures and, what is more, fear the additional workload which the introduction of said testing formats into the EFL-classroom entails. In sum, in addition to teachers making use of rubrics and rating scales in order to assess their learners’ performance in a given com­municative classroom situation, alternative assessment is chiefly related to learners musing upon their own learning processes (Hamayan 1995: 215-216 on the various purposes and uses of alternative assessment). This is why self-assessment and peer assessment are the two procedures that are closely linked with alternative assessment. Hence, they need to be carefully defined:

Techniques and materials used for the purpose of self-assessment include self-reports, self-testing, mutual peer-assessment, keeping of diaries, answering beha­viourally anchored questionnaires, use of global proficiency rating scales, and responding to so-called ‘can-do’-statements which request learners to state whether they are able to perform each of a number of specified language func­tions. (Oscarson 1997: 175)

Before innovations, such as self-assessment in English Language Teaching, are implemented in the practice of the classroom, they have regularly been the subject of academic and societal discourse on the one hand and curriculum as well as course book design on the other.

2 Self-Assessment as an Innovation in English Language Teaching

2.1 Self-Assessment and Academic / Societal Discourse

Innovations in English language teaching typically run through a top-down pro­cess, which is characterised by the subsequent graph:¹

                           

                  Fig. 1: Top-down process of innovations in English Language Teaching

Academic discourse in the feeder fields of English Language Teaching is usual­ly the basis for new developments in this area. The most prominent example is the advent of pragmatics in linguistics in the 1970s that ultimately led to com­municative language teaching being intro­duced into English language class­rooms worldwide. As to the influence of pragmatics, in the German school context, a distinction was made between a linguistic and an emancipatory branch of the ensuing teaching methodology. Representatives of the former considered the importance of pupils realizing speech acts as complex forms of language production to be vital; representatives of the latter, above all Hans-Eberhard Piepho (1974), additionally intended pupils to be able to assert their rights towards their English teachers by clearly stating their opinions and negoti­ating teaching and learning goals – a noteworthy concept that may be regarded as being the precursor of the idea of learner autonomy. Learner autonomy itself, i.e. the idea that pupils are empowered to gradually become self-reliant, life-long learners, can only be viewed as complete when assessment procedures also rely on pupils assessing their own performance. Thus, self-assessment is a tool to support learner autonomy as an individualised form of learning (Gardner 2000: 50). This is a concept that has been widely discussed both in general and foreign language education. 
 

The assumption that forms of self-reliant learning prove to be successful is also con­nected to psycholinguistics as well as to cognitive / constructivist learning theories, because language learning itself is seen as a process in which learners are actively involved by setting up hypotheses about forms and func­tions of the foreign language on the one hand and negotiating meaning in interactive viz. communicative situations on the other. Whilst hypoth­esis testing and negotiation of meaning may be viewed as cognitive learning strategies in so far as learners may – but need not – be aware of them, self-assessment is usually viewed as a metacognitive learning strategy (Chamot & O’Malley 1994: 62), for learners inten­tionally reflect upon the outcome of their learning. As a consequence, pupils may become aware of the manner in which they learn the foreign language both inside and outside school, which is the essence of lan­guage learning awareness as propounded by Rüschoff & Wolff in their model of foreign language learning (Rüschoff & Wolff 1999: 55) in a knowledge-orien­ted society. It goes without saying that thinking about one’s learning achieve­ments like­wise implies think­ing about the language in question, which is usually de­scribed as language awareness, namely, the second major area in Rüschoff & Wolff’s model (1999: 55). The third area is communicative competence invol­ving learning a language while being involved in commu­nicative activities. 
 

Rüschoff & Wolff’s model has been implemented in almost all of the curricula of English in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia for almost two decades. This applies to all school levels from the primary through the upper secondary level. The model was modified only in so far as the communicative activities were further differentiated according to the classification to be found in the Common European Framework of References for Languages, i.e. listening comprehension / listening and viewing comprehension, reading comprehension, writing and speaking, as well as mediation (Council of Europe 2001). Addi­tionally, the fact that communication always occurs in various (inter)cultural situations was taken into consideration (Ministerium für Schule und Weiterbil­dung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 2013: 17), and for the upper secondary level, the area of text and media competences was added so as to account for English as a subject also to be studied at university. Most importantly, the two pillars of language awareness and language learning awareness still form two of the major sections of teaching English as a foreign language at school in Germany.

In so far as self-assessment in foreign language teaching and learning is an essential part of self-directed learning, it is also the essence of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe 2001: 6), i.e. an innovation fostered in the field of language policy (e.g. Little 2005). This goes hand in hand with the societal idea of life-long learning, which is consi­dered to be an indispensable general competence that everyone needs so as to orientate themselves in ever changing knowledge- and media-oriented socie­ties. Finally, the social media in particular have brought about the idea that social acts – be it purchasing a book, writing an article or presenting photos or videos – are subject to constant evaluation. Hence, the zeitgeist also accounts for the rise of self-assessment – and, naturally, peer assessment. Yet, in order for innovations to become relevant in a school context, they need to be imple­mented via curricula and course books, the first habitually preceding the second.

2.2 Self-Assessment and Curriculum/Course Book Design

The notion of self-assessment first entered the syllabus of English for the upper secondary level, i.e. for grammar and comprehensive schools, in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) in 1999. It was introduced for the purpose of planning teaching according to the pupils’ needs and – in the case of portfolios – as an additional tool to assess pupils’ achievements (Ministerium für Schule und Weiterbildung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 2007: 106). The final version of the latest core curriculum of English for the upper secondary level denotes self-assessment as a subskill of pupils’ language learning compe­tence:

Sie können ihren Lernprozess beobachten und planen und den Grad ihrer eigenen Sprachbeherrschung im Allgemeinen treffend einschätzen und dokumentieren. (Ministerium für Schule und Weiterbildung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 2013: 26)²

It is a well-known fact that the implementation of an innovation via curricula takes time and is, for the most part, dependent on a parallel design of course books that contain corresponding activities for innovations to be fully realised in the classroom. Teachers as well as students need newly designed materials to be able to adjust to the challenges of the latest curricular developments in any school subject concerned. This particularly holds true for the notion of self-assessment in English language teaching since evaluation procedures prior to the beginnings of the latter at the turn of the century have typically been consid­ered to be solely the teacher’s task.

2.3 Self-Assessment and Classroom Practice

In view of the top-down processes of innovations in English language teaching as delineated in Fig. 1, classroom practice is the ultimate goal of all societal and academic endeavours to implement self-assessment as a form of alternative assessment in the EFL-classroom. That is why the conditions of such an imple­mentation need to be examined more closely. Generally speaking, the sub­sequent hypothesis might easily be verified as being self-evident:

The more devices for self-assessment are to be found in course books, the more teachers and learners will take the chance to practise this type of assessment on a regular basis, which will eventually result in promoting pupils’ responsibility for their own learning and in encouraging pupils to share their learning experiences, there­by enhancing classroom interaction.

Nowadays, task-based self-assessment has become a regular staple in course books of English as a foreign language in Germany. It is usually related to any of the four skills as well as to problems of grammar and vocabulary. It also focuses on more complex tasks, such as giving a presentation, telling a story, or conducting an interview. Yet, there is also global self-assessment at the cross­roads of learning English, e.g. The Junior Portfolio at the inter­section of primary and secondary English language education (Legutke et al. 2014). Global self-assessment is also relevant at the inter­section of the lower and upper secon­dary level of teaching and learning English, intended for pupils to obtain the opportunity to reflect upon a longer period of learning English at the end of the lower secondary level, before they specialise for A-level courses at the upper second­ary level. Learning English from My Point of View (Bosenius et al. 2000b) is such a self-assessment questionnaire that was designed as part of a course book (Bosenius et al. 2000a) for the 11th grade written to put into operation the then new syllabus of English for the upper secondary level. Yet, this self-assessment tool can also be used on its own as a general means of taking stock after several years of learning English. Further, its practicality was empirically tested shortly after the publication of the course book. That is why it can – even after more than a decade – serve as an example for teachers and learners of English of how to go about this challenging issue in their EFL-classes.³

3 Learning English from My Point of View – A Self-Assessment Questionnaire for Global Self-Assessment

3.1 Design of the Questionnaire

The self-assessment questionnaire Learning English from My Point of View (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 121-124) invites pupils to reflect upon the learning experiences they have had while learning English at the lower secondary level, i.e. in grades five to ten. The core of the questionnaire deals with the four skills of listening compre­hension, reading comprehension, spoken interaction, and written production. A final question encourages pupils to think about the con­nection of the intellectual effort of learning English and the feelings they associate with the learning process. The questions concerned are designed as tri-partite scales which pupils can tick thereby deciding how the descriptors provided apply to each of them personally. Especially the section of the ques­tionnaire which deals with the classical four skills is based upon the cate­gories of the Common European Framework of Refer­ence for Languages (Council of Europe 2001) as well as on their application in the syllabus for English at the upper secondary level in North Rhine-Westphalia. 
 

Unlike listening, reading, and speaking, the descriptors of which are primarily based on level B1 of the CEFR, the skill of writing is oriented towards level B2. In the following, the transformation of the CEFR-descriptors into entries of the questionnaire is outlined step by step: in the CEFR, overall written production for level B2 (Council of Europe 2001: 61) reads as follows:

B2

Can write clear, detailed texts on a variety of subjects related to his / her field of interest, synthesising and evaluating information and arguments from a number of sources.

In the syllabus for English at the upper secondary level (Ministry for School and Further Education North Rhine-Westphalia 2007: 155) the category of written production is described like this:

B2

Sie können sich in klarer und detaillierter Form schriftlich zu einem breiteren Spek­trum von Themen des persönlichen Interesses äußern. Sie können in einem Essay, Bericht oder Referat Informationen vermitteln, sich begründet für oder ge­gen Positionen aussprechen. Sie können in umfangreicheren persönlichen Texten (z. B. Brief) die Bedeutung von Ereignissen und Erfahrungen herausstellen und kommentieren.⁴

The descriptors related to the skill of writing in the self-assessment question­naire were subdivided into single entries in order for pupils to be able to supply unambiguous answers (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 123):

I can write well-structured texts on topics related to my fields of interest.

□ Yes. □ In most cases. □ Not really.

It depends on: ___________________________________________

I can present information in an essay or report, evaluating the different stand­points concerned and giving reasons for the standpoint I myself take.

□ Yes. □ In most cases. □ Not really.

It depends on: ____________________________________________

I can describe and discuss experiences and events in longer personal texts, e.g. letters and diaries.

□ Yes. □ In most cases. □ Not really.

It depends on: ____________________________________________

The implementation of the CEFR-levels in the questionnaire under discussion is a telling example of how the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages may be adjusted to any school context.

3.2 A Survey Undertaken at a German Grammar School

The practicality of the self-assessment questionnaire Learning English from My Point of View (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 121-124) was examined by means of a survey conducted in the 11th grade of a German grammar school at the beginning of the school year with a view to finding out how pupils rate their learning of English after six years of schooling. The questionnaire was filled in by the pupils during an English lesson of 45 minutes. As the researcher was present during that time, the likelihood of a low response rate could be circum­vented. 57 pupils of three regular English courses at the upper secondary level and 24 pupils attending an English course as part of a bilingual branch at the school in question took part in the survey. As the results of the non-bilingual groups are documented in Bosenius (2003), the present article focuses on the results provided by the bilingual group and compares the latter with the former in relation to the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. That is why the closed questions are of prior interest. Reasons provided by the pupils for their choice of category will only be considered if they noticeably provide information on why the students ticked particular answers.

3.3 Bilingual Teaching and Learning as an Innovation at School in Germany

Bilingual teaching and learning in Germany, or else Content and Language Inte­grated Learning (CLIL), to use the umbrella term coined by the European Commission, is a type of schooling in which subjects other than languages are taught in a foreign language (as to its origins and aims, see Bosenius 2009a, 2009b). Since the beginnings of bilingual teaching and learning in the 1960s, the subjects taught in a language other than German have been largely extend­ed, starting with geography, history, and political sciences, moving on to biolo­gy, chemistry, and these days also including physical education, religious education and art. In full-fledged bilingual branches⁵, implemented mostly but not exclusively at grammar schools, learners receive two more lessons of Eng­lish in grades five and six, i.e. seven hours per week in total, to prepare them for the bilingual branch usually beginning in grade seven. In the years to come, the content subjects are taught in the foreign language by adding one hour to the ordinary schedule in addition to the standard lessons of English as a foreign language. In this way, by the end of the tenth grade, pupils may receive up to ten hours of instruction in English or any other foreign language chosen for the bilingual programme per week.

In bilingual classrooms, the curriculum of the content subject is binding, and the technical terminology referring to any of the content subjects needs to be imparted in both languages involved, i.e. German and English or German and French etc.. As to the origins of bilingual teaching and learning as an innovation at school in Germany, the subsequent graph shows an inverted pyramid as opposed to that illustrating how regular innovations in English language teach­ing come about (cf. 2.1). Here, a bottom-up rather than a top-down process is relevant (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Bottom-up process of innovations re bilingual teaching and learning in Germany

Dedicated teachers – as well as parents and their children – initiated the pro­cess of bilingual schooling in Germany in order to foster foreign language learning against the background of the requirements of the international job market. Curriculum design followed later. Nowadays there are administrative regulations in the German states of Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, and Schleswig-Holstein. In Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-West­phalia, bilingual teaching is based on recommendations, and in Bremen, Rhine­land-Palatinate, Saxony, and Thuringia specific educational plans are operating (cf. Mentz 2013: 88). Publishing houses set out to meet the challenges of creat­ing adequate materials to be used in a bilingual geography or history classroom, particularly as the textbooks available in the content subjects for native speakers of English or French were too difficult in view of the linguistic resources that 7th to 10th graders could rely on. Academic discourse first developed in the foreign languages concerned (e.g. Otten & Wildhage 2003 and, more recently, Hallet & Königs 2013), and the discourse in the content subjects involved came later (e.g. Bosenius et al. 2007). All in all, the discussion of a suitable model of instruction is still in full swing – with a view to reconciling the methodological demands of the subjects and their linguistic realisation in a foreign language.

3.4 Results of the Survey in a Bilingual Course

The question that introduces the pupils to the four skills and asks them to as­sess their English in the sections of listening comprehension, reading compre­hension, spoken interaction, and written production reads as follows:

Being proficient in a language means being good at four basic skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing in that language. The statements below describe specific situations in which English is used. How would you assess your English with regard to the situations mentioned? (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 123)

As table 1 below clearly reveals, a huge majority of pupils in the bilingual branch (87.5%) have no problems, at all, understanding their peers in the EFL-class­room. Understanding the news on the radio and on TV is a different matter, as only a quarter of the whole group claim to be able to do so without any restraints. The lyrics of songs also pose some problems, as only a little more than a third of the entire group (37.5%) tick Yes, agreeing to understanding these auditory texts as they come. Having a look at the it-depends-on section of the ques­tionnaire shows that the clarity, the pace, and the dialect of the speaker are assumed to have an impact on the success of listening to both the news and the lyrics of songs. Sometimes the lack of vocabulary as well as of technical terminology is also mentioned as a factor that has some influence on the compre­hension process. Accordingly, a little less than two thirds (58.33%) of the group always feel comfortable listening to English, and a little more than one third (37.5%) claim to feel comfortable listening to English in most cases (Table 5). In sum, one may say that although listening is the skill that is most vital when it comes to learning a foreign language, this skill is not the easiest one to master in the eyes of the pupils who answered the self-assessment questionnaire:

	Yes	In most cases	Not really
I can understand classroom discussions without any problems.	21 (87.5%)	3 (12.5%)	- -
I can understand the news on the radio or on television and I am able to pick out the most important pieces of information.	6 (25%)	18 (75%)	- -
I can understand the lyrics of songs.	9 (37.5%)	14 (58.33%)	1 (4.17%)

Tab. 1: Listening comprehension

As far as reading comprehension is concerned (Table 2), the highest score (70.83%) is reached in relation to understanding letters and e-mails dealing with everyday matters and feelings. Yet, understanding articles and reports con­cerned with current events and issues in which the writer takes a particular standpoint is rated in the same manner as the ability to listen to songs, which is to say that a little more than one third of the learner group (37.5%) answer this question in the affirmative. Finally, the techniques of skimming and scanning are only known to 16.67% of the entire group, whereas about two thirds of the group claim to be able to apply them in most cases. Particularly the result per­taining to reading an article fairly quickly, thereby applying the techniques of skimming and scanning, is noteworthy as pupils in a bilingual programme are used to reading plenty of texts in English on geographical, historical and political matters. The justifications they provide in the it-depends-on section, related to the skill of reading, reveal that vocabulary knowledge and technical terms are the issues that pupils worry about most. As far as the pupils’ feelings towards reading in English are concerned (Table 5), about a fifth of them (20.83%) indi­cate that they do not really enjoy reading texts in English, a little more than one third (37.5%) tick the answer In most cases, and only 41.67% answer this item by ticking Yes.

	Yes	In most cases	Not really	No Entry
I can understand letters and e-mails dealing with everyday matters and feelings.	17 (70.83%)	7 (29.17%)	- -	- -
I can understand articles and reports dealing with current events and issues in which the writer takes a particular standpoint.	9 (37.5%)	12 (50%)	1 (4.17%)	2 (8.33%)
I can read through an article fairly quickly and get the main idea or gist of it and find all the necessary information on a specific subject, i.e. I am familiar with the techniques of skimming and scanning.	4 (16.67%)	16 (66.67%)	3 (12.50%)	1 (4.17%)

Tab. 2: Reading comprehension

Speaking is the skill that the participants in a bilingual course of the 11th grade at a German grammar school rate the highest. 75.0% of the learner group answer the statement that they are able to talk about everyday topics in English with foreigners who cannot speak German, in the affirmative. 25.0% say they are able to do so in most cases. Talking about personal experiences and cur­rent events yields a clear division of two thirds who say Yes and one third who say In most cases. Again, a little more than two thirds (70.83%) can utter their personal opinions and plans and give reasons for them, and a little less than one third (29.17%) say they can do so in most cases. As far as summa­rizing the content of stories and newspaper articles is concerned, the score is a little less for Yes (58.33%) and a little more for In most cases (41.67%). Strikingly, the entry Not really has not been ticked, at all. In the same way, about two thirds of the pupils (62.5%) feel at ease when talking to other people in English (Table 5):

	Yes	In most cases	Not really
I am able to talk about everyday topics in English with foreigners who cannot speak German.	18 (75.0%)	6 (25.0%)	- -
I can talk about personal experiences and current events.	16 (66.67%)	8 (33.33%)	- -
I can express my personal opinions and plans and give reasons for them.	17 (70.83%)	7 (29.17%)	- -
I can summarize the content of stories and newspaper articles in English.	14 (58.33%)	10 (41.67%)	- -

Tab. 3: Spoken interaction

The skill of writing is viewed less optimistically than the skill of speaking (Table 4). Being able to write well-structured texts on topics related to their fields of interest is something that a little more than half of the learner group (54.17%) answers with Yes, and a little less than half of them (45.83%) answer with In most cases. Presenting information in an essay or report, evaluating the diffe­rent standpoints concerned and giving reasons for the stand­points taken is equally answered by one half of the learner group each with Yes and with In most cases. Describing and discussing experiences and events in longer per­sonal texts, e.g. letters and diaries, is something that, again, a little more than half of the group (54.17%) claim to be able to do without any restraints. A little more than one third (37.5%) say they can do so in most cases, and a little less than 10 percent (8.33%) have ticked the answer Not really. Again, as far as the factors are concerned that impact on their choice of descriptor, the pupils of this bilingual group name vocabulary and technical terms as well as the level of difficulty the text to be produced is expected to meet.

The slight restraint emerging when it comes to talking about personal expe­ri­ences (Table 3) and describing and discussing them in a written form (Table 4) could, however, also be rooted in the pupils’ dislike to express personal matters in a school context. That is why they might be rating their spoken or written skills in these sections less favourably. This is because learners in an EFL-classroom act in their role as ‘pupils at school’, which might have had an impact on their self-assessment. Further, pupils’ feelings towards writing do not ne­cessarily conform to how they assess their actual writing skills (Table 5). Only about one fifth of them (20.83%) answer the item I enjoy writing English texts in the affirmative. Half of them indicate that they do so in most cases, and a little less than one third (29.17%) claim not to be too enthusiastic about writing in English:

	Yes	In most cases	Not really
I can write well-structured texts on topics related to my fields of interest.	13 (54.17%)	11 (45.83%)	- -
I can present information in an essay or report, evaluating the different stand­points concerned and giving reasons for the standpoint I myself take.	12 (50.0%)	12 (50.0%)	- -
I can describe and discuss experiences and events in longer personal texts, e.g. letters and diaries.	13 (54.17%)	9 (37.5%)	2 (8.33%)

Tab. 4: Written production

The final question on feelings and the learning process is the following one:

Language learning does not only require making an intellectual effort. Feelings are equally important to the learning process. How do the following statements apply to you? (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 124)

The answers to this final section of the self-assessment questionnaire clearly show that there is a difference between feeling confident when learning English on the one hand and enjoying learning English on the other. Apparently, a little more than two thirds of the entire group (70.83%) feel confident when learning English (Table 5). Yet, less than half of them (45.83%) enjoy learning English without any restraint. As to their individual skills, there is a certain amount of pupils who do not really enjoy reading (20.83%) or writing (29.17%) texts in English. As these figures on the connection between feelings and language learning illustrate, a ranking order of the skills that the learners of a bilingual programme at a German grammar school are usually comfortable with yields a sequence of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

	Yes	In most cases	Not really	No entry
I feel confident when I am learning English.	17 (70.83%)	6 (25.0%)	1 (4.17%)	- -
I enjoy learning English.	11 (45.83%)	11 (45.83%)	2 (8.33%)	- -
I feel comfortable listen­ing to English.	14 (58.33%)	9 (37.5%)	- -	1 (4.17%)
I enjoy reading texts in English.	10 (41.67%)	9 (37.5%)	5 (20.83%)	- -
I feel at ease when I talk to other people in English.	15 (62.5%)	9 (37.5%)	- -	- -
I enjoy writing English texts.	5 (20.83%)	12 (50.0%)	7 (29.17%)	- -

Tab. 5: Feelings and language learning

The above-mentioned findings with regard to the question of how the four skills are linked to pupils’ feelings about them shed an interesting light on the more literacy-oriented skills of reading and writing. As the latter may be assumed to require more efforts, especially in a foreign language, at least some pupils seem to have some reserves in connection with them. In case the questionnaire at hand is used again as a diagnostic tool in a bilingual or regular EFL-classroom to encourage pupils to reflect upon their attitudes towards the four skills and yields similar results, extensive discussions among teachers and their pupils will be needed to answer the question of what can be done in order to motivate pupils to read and write in English.

3.5 Comparison of Results in One Bilingual and Three      Non-Bilingual Learner Groups

Comparing the answers given by pupils in both a bilingual class (24 subjects) and three non-bilingual, viz. regular classes of English (57 subjects) (Bosenius 2003: 420) yields several prominent results. As to the oral skills of listening and speaking, the box Not really was not ticked by the pupils of the bilingual group, except for one entry regarding the statement I can understand the lyrics of songs. The latter is said to depend upon the diction used and the clarity of the pronunciation. The correspondent sections on feelings related to listening and speaking confirm this result: whereas 62.5% of the bilingual group (Table 5) usually feel at ease when they talk to other people in English, this is usually only the case for one third (33.33%; Bosenius 2003: 423) of the non-bilingual groups, about a fifth of them even indi­cating that they do not really do so (Bosenius 2003: 423). Further, 58.33% of the bilingual group (Table 5) usually feel comfortable listening to English, which is true only for about a quarter (26.31%; Bosenius 2003: 423) of the non-bilingual groups. Again, about a fifth of them say that they do not really feel comfortable listening to English.⁶
 

As far as reading comprehension and written production are concerned, some of the results are particularly striking. The subsequent graphs (Figures 3 and 4) illustrate the pupils’ answers to selected items of the questionnaire: the item I can understand articles and reports dealing with current events and issues in which the writer takes a particular standpoint, which appeared to be somewhat difficult for the bilingual group (cf. 3.4) is even more challenging for the non-bilingual groups: 14.0% of them say that they cannot really comply with this requirement (Figure 3):

Fig. 3: Reading comprehension in three non-bilingual groups (left) and one bilingual 

                 group (right)

Still, 41.67% of the bilingual group usually enjoy reading texts in English, where­as only 14.0% of the non-bilingual groups claim to do so. Interestingly, as shown in Table 5 above, one fifth of the bilingual group and a quarter of the non-bilingual groups do not enjoy reading text in English very often. 

The item I can present information in an essay or report, evaluating the different standpoints concerned and giving reasons for the standpoint I myself take is answered unambiguously by the bilingual group, which is split exactly in two halves, one saying Yes, and the other one saying In most cases. In the non-bi­lingual groups, almost one third, i.e. 30.0% say that they are not able to act ac­cording to this demand, and only about one fifth of them answer this statement without any restraint:

Fig. 4: Written production in three non-bilingual groups (left) and one bilingual group (right)

However, the pupils of the bilingual class rating their written skills higher than those in the three regular English language classes under discussion, do not necessarily like writing better as well. Quite on the contrary, only one fifth, namely 21.0%, in both groups say that they usually enjoy writing texts in English. 44.0% of the non-bilingual groups and 29.17% of the bilingual course do not like writing English texts very often. 50.0% of the bilingual group and 35.0% of the non-bilingual groups do so sometimes. As a conclusion, it can be as­sumed that reading and writing are the skills that pupils in both regular EFL-classes and bilingual classrooms have to work on most. Since a majority of learners in both groups indicate that their limited knowledge of vocabulary and technical terms is responsible for their ticking the less favourable answers regarding reading and writing, it is highly important to consider their answers concerning their study habits with regard to learning vocabulary. Nothing (four times), almost nothing in the last years (twice), and only in class five and six (twice), and do not learn vocabulary very often (once) amount to nine subjects out of 24, i.e. more than one third (!) of the bilingual group, who say that they do not work on their vocabulary on a regular basis. This is one of the issues to be dealt with when the results of the questionnaire are transferred to the practice of the classroom.

3.6 Integration of the Results into Classroom Practice

The results presented on the basis of the exemplary self-assessment question­naire Learning English from My Point of View (Bosenius et al. 2000b: 121-124) are not representative in a strictly statistical sense. Yet, as there were more than 30 subjects involved, their answers give reason to the assumption that a wider population might tend to respond in a similar manner. However, statistical representativeness has not been the aim of the present survey. Rather, it remains to be examined how such a tool may serve as an instrument of diag­nosis, hence an in­stru­ment for learning. While musing upon the different sections of the questionnaire, pupils are busy thinking about their own learning, thereby enhancing their language learning competence. At the same time, they also think about the challenges that the learning of English as a foreign language entails. In order to promote classroom discourse on the results of the questionnaire, pupils may be invited to discuss individual issues in smaller groups amongst their peers and present the findings of their discussion to the whole class. Guiding questions for such discussions could be, for example:

• What measures can be taken to better understand the lyrics of songs or the news on the radio and TV?
• What texts can be read in class to practise the techniques of skimming and scanning that might also promote enthusiasm about reading in English?
• What sub-skills are needed to produce longer and more challenging texts?
• How can consistent work on vocabulary be brought about?

Most importantly, however, teachers need to support their pupils in developing a positive mind set towards self-assessment in general as not all of them might see the necessity or feel the need to apply such metacognitive strategies. The question­naire can be used irrespective of the course book that learners work with in their EFL-class­rooms, since its entries are not related to oral or written texts that pupils have been working with for the period of a teaching unit. This is why it is a useful tool to encourage pupils to reflect upon their English language skills in general at the intersection of the lower and the upper secondary level. Yet, in order to refine their self-assessment skills, task-based self-assessment on the texts, topics and skills under discussion in individual courses at the upper secondary level is at stake. As writing at school is neither very much appre­ciated by the group of learners attending a bilingual programme, nor by those groups attending regular EFL-classes, this skill needs extra support. This concerns writing texts following literary analyses in non-bilingual groups just as well as writing texts in the wake of scientific arguments in bilingual groups dealing with a content subject in English as a foreign language.

4 Learners’ Self-Assessment and Teacher’s Evaluation

To any expert at teaching and learning English as a foreign language, the most crucial point when it comes to self-assessment as one form of alternative assessment is to what extent the learners’ statements regarding their skills in English correspond to the teacher’s evaluations of their learning outcome in the EFL-classroom. It goes without saying that self-assessment is deemed to fail if teachers do not take their pupils’ views seriously. Likewise, self-assessment cannot be fully realized, if pupils assume that self-assessment is a means to negotiate their grades for the better. The general descriptors provided by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and their appli­cation in curricula and course books only constitute a first step towards learners reflecting upon their competences in English. What is needed is a detailed description of the competences that teachers expect their pupils to achieve in relation to specific tasks to be carried out during their English lessons as well as a scale that indicates how successfully the learners have coped with the respective assignment. The individual items on such a scale can be ticked both by the teacher and the learners independently of one another. The differences that may occur are subject to further discussions among teachers and learners. They can debate upon these differences within the whole class or in so-called teacher-learner conferences. These may be arranged between a teacher and one learner or between a teacher and two learners. Those conferences on a one-to-one or one-to-two basis allow for more individualised feedback. Only if teachers succeed in creating such scales – or rubrics, as it were – in coope­ration with their pupils at best, will the latter believe that their teachers are willing to develop rating procedures that make their grading more transparent. As the topic of assessment and evaluation rather seldom appears as a theme in courses of studies aiming at English language teacher professionalisation in Germany, the issue of alternative assessment is even more difficult to master by students of English. It seems that the practice of school, at least as far as course books of English are concerned (e.g. Schwarz 2006), is ahead of teacher training at university. Yet, the acceptance of self-assessment formats both by English language teachers and learners needs further research based on large-scale empirical studies.

References

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Bosenius, Petra (2003). Leistungsbewertung in Schülerhand: Zur Selbstevaluation fremdsprachlicher Lernprozesse im Englischunterricht. In: Empirische Pädagogik 17 (2003) 3, 415-431.

Bosenius, Petra, Jürgen Donnerstag & Andreas Rohde (Hrsg.) (2007). Der bilinguale Unterricht Englisch aus der Sicht der Fachdidaktiken. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.

Bosenius, Petra (2009a). Content and Language Integrated Learning: A Model for Mul­tiliteracy? In: Ditze, Stephan-Alexander & Ana Halbach (Hrsg.) (2009). Bilingualer Sachfachunterricht (CLIL) im Kontext von Sprache, Kultur und Multi­kulturalität. Frankfurt: Peter Lang (Reihe Mehrsprachigkeit in Schule und Unter­richt, MSU, Bd. 9), 15-25.

Bosenius, Petra (2009b). BICS and CALP Revisited – Reflections upon the Impact of Second Language Acquisition Theory on the Practice of CLIL-Pedagogy. In: Fäcke, Christiane (Hrsg.) (2009). Sprachbegegnung und Sprachkontakt in europäischer Di­mension. Frankfurt: Peter Lang (Reihe Kolloquium Fremdsprachenunterricht, KFU, Bd. 35), 203-214.

Chamot, Anna Uhl & J. Michael O’Malley (1994). The CALLA Handbook: Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Council of Europe (ed.) (2001). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning Teaching Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (http://www.coe.int-/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf; 15.10.2015).

Council of Europe (ed.) (2011). The European Language Portfolio.

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Hamayan, Else V. (1995). Approaches to Alternative Assessment. In: Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 15 (1995), 212-226.

Hallet, Wolfgang (2005). Bilingualer Unterricht: Idee, Formen und Modelle. In: Der Fremd­sprachliche Unterricht Englisch – Content and Language Integrated Learn­ing Bilingualer Unterricht. CD-ROM, 12.

Hallet, Wolfgang & Frank G. Königs (2013). Handbuch Bilingualer Unterricht – Content and Language Integrated Learning. Seelze-Velber: Klett / Kallmeyer.

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1 Bilingual teaching and learning as realised in Germany is an exception to this rule (cf. 3.3).

2  “They are able to observe and plan their learn­ing process, and, generally speaking, they are able to truly evaluate and document the degree of their own language proficiency”. (Ministry for School and Further Education North Rhine-Westphalia 2013: 26; Translation P.B.).

 3 Readers who are interested in studies referring to the actual learning outcome of CLIL in terms of students’ proficiency in English might want to turn to Rumlich (2016), who not only provides a comprehensive survey of the ‘state-of-the art’ in this respect (Rumlich 2016: 191-228), but also conducted a large-scale, two-year quan­titative study of his own proving that the general enthusiasm about the positive im­pact that CLIL might have on students’ achievements needs additional empirical research that accounts for the factors relevant under everyday conditions of teaching and learning in a school context.

4 They can express themselves clearly and in a detailed manner on a wide range of themes of personal interest. They can convey information in an essay, report, or presentation, and give reasons for or against a standpoint taken. They can point out and comment on the relevance of events and experiences in longer personal texts (e.g. letters). (Ministry for School and Further Education North Rhine-Westphalia 2007: 155).

  5 For an overview of bilingual offers that come along as modules or projects, see Hallet (2005).

6 The analysis of a random sample of 38 classes of ninth graders having taken part in the DESI-study (German-English Students’ Achieve­ments International) yielded a similar outcome. As to listening, the pupils from bilingual classes are ahead of their peers by two years (Klieme 2006). Further, a more recent evaluation of CLIL and non-CLIL students’ achievements in English was undertaken by the Ministry of School and Further Education in North Rhine-Westphalia. The survey, conducted in grade 9 of 46 grammar schools, produced the result that CLIL-students are “[…], on average, pretty consistently approximately 10% above non-CLIL students as regards listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge and text production […]”. (Rumlich 2016: 207-208)