Reflective Self-Assessment as a Pedagogical Innovation in ESP-Oriented Language Education for Non-Linguistic Students: Evidence from a Small-Scale Pilot Study

Abstract

This study reports a small-scale pilot evaluation of a structured reflective self-assessment questionnaire used after an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) communication task. Thirty-four second-year Oil and Gas students at Tashkent State Technical University (18 A2 and 16 B1 learners) completed a pair task on responding to a minor oil leak and then filled in a bilingual English-Uzbek post-task questionnaire. The instrument integrated lexical, interactional, argumentative and strategic dimensions of communication and required each learner to formulate one concrete improvement goal. Descriptive analysis showed that 31 participants (91.2%) experienced some degree of difficulty using professional vocabulary, while answering unexpected questions was the most frequently reported difficulty (19 participants, 55.9%). Twenty participants (58.8%) reported that they could explain and justify a proposed action clearly, whereas 14 (41.2%) reported only partial or insufficient justification. The questionnaire was rated highly useful for identifying communication difficulty (M = 4.65 on a five-point scale), and 32 participants (94.1%) stated that it helped them formulate a concrete improvement goal. Pilot responses also revealed wording and scale-interpretation problems, including two irrelevant open responses and one internally inconsistent response pattern. The findings provide empirical support for the instrument's diagnostic and formative usability and indicate specific revisions required before main implementation.