The traditional way of designing study programmes was to start with the content of the course teachers intended to teach, plan how to teach the content, and assess students’ achievement. With the shift from “teacher centred” to “student centred” teaching and learning, a new approach evolved. This approach, referred to as an outcome-based approach, focuses on what the students are expected to be able to do at the end of the study. It thus focuses on the learning outcomes. One frequently cited definition of learning outcomes is that they are statements of what “a learner is expected to know, understand and be able to do after successful completion of a process of learning” (European Communities, 2009, p. 11). Or in other words, learning outcomes are a set of expectations concerning skills and knowledge students should acquire during their studies. The focus is on activities attempting to result in mastery of predetermined knowledge, skills and competences which are “at the core of the individual’s capacities” and which “enable him to successfully integrate into labour and social life” (Zúñiga, 2002, p. 83). They are thus a crucial factor in designing a study programme.

This paper reports on a small-scale study aimed at investigating students’ perceptions of what they learned after the completion of Maritime English 1 and Maritime English 2 courses. It is about student self-assessment of subject-specific skills and competences, one dimension of the many learning outcomes a higher education institution gives rise to. Emphasis is placed on the assessment of a student’s perception of competence across receptive and productive skills.

The objectives of this small-scale study were thus to identify:

1.   1. the students’ subjective assessment of what they had learned after the completion of Maritime English 1 (winter semester) and Maritime English 2 (summer semester) courses;

2.   2.. correlations between various language skills.

The posed questions were:

1. How did the students’self-perceived learning outcomes differ according to the skills?
2. What were the correlations between various language skills?

Council of Europe. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching and assessment. (2002). Third printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zúñiga, F. V. (2002). Key competencies and lifelong learning. A technical workshop. Saint Lucia. 10-13 September.