Ways of Writing: Linguistic Analysis of Self-Assessment and Traditional Assignments

Abstract

Scholars of teaching and learning have endorsed self-assessment assignments as a way to encourage greater reflection by students. However, no studies to date have compared writing in self-assessment with traditional academic assignments. We performed a quantitative text analysis of students' language in self-assessment versus traditional assignments from 3 courses. Self-assessment assignments included more references to cognitive words (i.e., words related to insight) than traditional academic assignments. In addition, self-assessments included more emotion words and pronouns and were linguistically simpler than traditional academic assignments. We conclude that self-assessment assignments encourage students to become more reflective, a goal of the American Psychological Association (2007) curricular guidelines.