One of the implicit aims of higher education is to enable students to become better judges of their own work. The present study is the first to examine the effect of self-assessment on the daily class participation of novice college Spanish students, involving students in their own daily assessment and the creation of the self-assessment tool used in the classroom. This investigation explores the validity, reliability, and outcomes of self-assessment methodology, and the effects it may have on students’ motivation, risk taking, and learning styles when learning Spanish as a foreign language. The study included an treatment group (n = 23) and a control group (n = 23) and utilized a mixed approach that combined quantitative and qualitative data collection through pre- and poststudy questionnaires, a reaction paper, an individual interview, and daily participation scores. The results show that self-assessment is an evaluative technique as valid as instructor grading, with the advantage that students’ awareness in terms of their expectations is positively reinforced by the formative assessment. The results performed on the participants’ gains in overall motivation and risk taking from pretest and posttest show that awareness of daily grade participation criteria did not have a statistically significant main effect. This study is not without its own limitations because the results are based upon a single case study with a relatively small sample size (N = 46) and as a result should be interpreted or generalized accordingly. However, it sheds light into a new area of study such as engaging elementary college students as active agents of their own learning.