University students' self-assessment of ESP project work as a tool for aligning teaching with learning

Even though student involvement in assessment (self-, peer- and teacher-assessment) has been extensively investigated across a wide spectrum of discipline areas, self-assessment of learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) remains an underexplored area of research. To date, little known research has focused on self-assessment used to analyse learning through ESP project work. This chapter reports on the results of a small-scale study which aimed to establish the learning outcomes self-assessed by the students as achieved through ESP project work and the difficulties faced by the students while learning through ESP project work at a university in Lithuania. The data for the present research were drawn from 22 English majors’ written reports. To analyse the data, qualitative methodology was used. The study resulted in the identification and description of three general dimensions and six underlying higher order themes, including (1) student-identified benefits of learning through ESP project work, (2) student-identified challenges of learning through ESP project, and (3) student-assessed experience of such learning. The results of this study demonstrate that self-assessment practice was effective as all study participants self-assessed learning through ESP project work, which suggests that self-assessment supported deep learning. The findings regarding student-perceived challenges are valuable as, on the one hand, they are a rich source of evidence for students enabling them to identify their real needs. On the other hand, these findings enable ESP teachers to take their students’ needs into consideration and to align their teaching with student learning in the way which could help their students to perform better in the future.