An Empirical Study On The Correlation Between Peer Assessment And Writing Self-efficacy In English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

Writing self-efficacy refers to the degree of self-confidence of the writer in whether he or she can accomplish a particular writing task(Pajares,2003).Domestic and international researchers generally deem that it consists of two dimensions: writing skill self-efficacy and writing task self-efficacy(Pajares & Valiante,1997;Chen Ning & Lu Jiamei,2010;Li Hang,2014).The writing self-efficacy in this study accordingly refers to these two aspects.This study aims to explore the correlation between peer assessment and writing self-efficacy through empirical studies under the guidance of cooperative learning,selfefficacy and 3A curriculum theory(Awareness,Autonomy,and Authenticity),with the purpose of providing valuable reference for English writing teaching in senior high schools.This study intends to answer three research questions: 1)What is the relationship between peer assessment and senior high school students’ English writing task self-efficacy? 2)What is the relationship between peer assessment and senior high school students’ English writing skill self-efficacy? 3)How does the improvement of self-efficacy in English writing affect senior high school students’ English writing proficiency?The subjects of this study were 108 students from two ordinary classes in the first grade of a senior high school in Tengzhou,Shandong province.One of which was the experimental class(EC),and the other was the control class(CC),and the study lasted for one semester.In the first week of school,a questionnaire survey was conducted in the two classes to find out whether the students of the two classes were in the same level of writing self-efficacy.In addition,a composition test of senior high school entrance examination was carried out to check whether the writing competencies of students in the two classes were equal.From the second week,the students in the experimental class received peer assessment training,while the writing teaching in the control class adopted the conventional teacher evaluation method.At the end of the semester,the students in the two classes were investigated with self-efficacy questionnaires(post-test),the data of which and the scores of the students at the end of the semester were analyzed by SPSS V22.0.The results showed that peer assessment can improve students’ English writing task self-efficacy and writing skills self-efficacy respectively,and the effects between them are no significance.However,individual differences in the influence of peer assessment on English writing self-efficacy are existed,in which the sense of improvement of self-efficacy of medium and low-level students are significantly higher than that of high-level students,and the improvement of medium level students’ selfefficacy are the most significant.This study provides a new teaching perspective for English writing teaching by improving students’ sense of self-efficacy in English writing,especially by improving students’ writing level at critical points.But there are also some limitations,such as the scale is adapted on the basis of the existing one,and limited by the conditions,the selected research sample is a single one,the research only lasted for one semester,so the experimental data may be biased.All these variables need to be corrected in future researches.