TOEFL iBT Speaking, Goal – orientation and self-assessment A study of Iranian EFL learners

Owing to the growing attention to learner s independence and autonomy, self-assessment has received considerable attention in recent years. Nevertheless, this notion is not well-known to most English language teachers and students in Iran where traditional assessment is still dominant. This study explored the effect of self-assessment on EFL learners’TOEFL iBT speaking score, goal orientation as well as scrutinizing the relationship between Iranian EFL learners goalorientationand their speaking scores in TOEFL iBT test. To do so, 72 advanced EFL learners who were both male andfemale studying in Jahan Elm institute of higher education in Mashhad, Iran participated in the current study. Experimental group consisted of 36 EFL learners while control group encompassed 36 EFL learners. All participantstook TOEFL iBT test, goal orientation questionnaire during the first and final week of the semester (i.e. pretest,posttest) and being trained through the TOEFL iBT software. Independent sample t test and Pearson correlationcoefficient were used to find the difference between the two groups in terms of their speaking scores and goal orientatedbehavior and to find the relationship between goal orientation and speaking score of TOEFL iBT test. Results from the two post measurements indicated that students in the experimental group showed statistically significant gains onspeaking scores and their goal orientated behavior as compared with the control group. Moreover, outcomes illustratedthe existence of significant positive correlation between the learning goal orientation and TOEFL iBT speaking scoresof EFL learners. In sum, the results of this study suggest that self-assessment should be integrated into regular TOEFL iBT preparation courses in order to help TOEFL iBT candidates become independent learners and ultimately achievemore satisfactory results in English proficiency tests, particularly TOEFL iBT test

کلیدواژه ها:

TOEFL iBT ، Speaking test ، Speaking Proficiency ، self-assessment ، gaol-orientation