The Impact Of Multiple Evaluation On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Motivation And Performance

Teaching evaluation is an essential part of the English curriculum,which has the function of motivating and promoting learning.The National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017 Edition)revised by the Ministry of Education in2020,clearly advocates the evaluation system of combining formative assessment and summative assessment,and the diversification of evaluation subjects,evaluation forms,comprehensiveness of evaluation focuses and multidimensional evaluation objectives.Thus,evaluation can pay attention to the comprehensive development of students’ key competencies,and give a positive washback effect on teaching.The above principles should also be followed in the teaching of English writing as well.Positive and effective evaluation can stimulate students’ motivation,while motivation can improve students’ academic performance.Therefore,implementing positive and effective multiple evaluation is the main means of enhancing students’ writing motivation and performance.However,in the current English writing in senior high school,writing evaluation has focused on the written products and has merely relied on one-time teacher feedback.In addition,the problems such as limited evaluation focuses,monotone evaluation form,and single evaluation criteria also contribute to the severe deterioration of students’ writing motivation and performance.Multiple evaluation based on the constructivism offers solutions to these problems.In response to the current lack of application of multiple evaluation in the senior high school context,the author constructed a research framework according to feedback intervention theory and process writing approach,and applied multiple evaluation in two Grade 11 parallel classes in Chongqing Chaoyang Middle School.This research employed self-,peer-and teacher-assessments as formative assessments and a teacherevaluation on learners’ overall performance in the process of writing and assessments,aiming to explore the influence of multiple evaluation from the following aspects: 1.What are the impacts of multiple evaluation on senior high school students’ writing motivation?2.What are the impacts of multiple evaluation on senior high school students’ writing performance?This research had a quasi-experimental design,which made use of mixed methods.Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and analyzed in order to answer the research questions.Two parallel classes with 107 Grade 11 students served as the research participants.In the experimental class,55 students had the intervention of multiple evaluation while 52 students in the control class received single teacher-assessment as what in the traditional English teaching.Through pre-test and pre-questionnaire of writing motivation,the results showed that writing motivation and performance in the two classes had no significant difference.During the implementation of multiple evaluation in experimental class namely the self-,peer-and teacher-assessments in the writing process and teacher-evaluation on final written products,learners would complete three rounds of writing which were assigned according to the teaching materials in the textbook.In the post-experiment stage,all participants would take post-test and post-questionnaire.Independent samples t-test and paired samples t-tests were performed by SPSS 26.0 in order to investigate the significance of the impact of multiple evaluation.Besides,six students selected randomly to represent different writing levels(i.e.,high,medium,low)would be interviewed.Their attitudes towards the multiple evaluation and any feasible suggestions were gathered to deeply analyze the effects of multiple evaluation on students’ writing motivation and performance.The research results signified that compared with the control class,students’ writing motivation and performance in the experimental class had significant differences after the implementation of multiple evaluation.Precisely,multiple evaluation had a positive impact on students’ writing motivation,especially in the three aspects: intrinsic goal orientation,self-efficacy,and apprehension.Moreover,multiple evaluation can improve students’ writing performance,especially for low-level and medium-level students who improved more significantly,whereas high-level students improve less significantly.As students became active evaluators in multiple evaluation,the interactions among students and between student and teacher were enhanced.Students were more willing to get involved in writing classes,thereby getting improved in writing performance.Meanwhile,there were still many shortcomings in the application of multiple evaluation such as inefficient peer feedbacks from irresponsible students and time-consuming processes for low-level students.Overall,this research testified the effectiveness and feasibility of multiple evaluation in English writing teaching in senior high school.Being active evaluators,students knew better about their merits and demerits in writing.However,due to the insufficient number of research participants,research is less representative.The limited duration of the experiment made multiple evaluation difficult for low-level students causing the results less persuasive.Moreover,the dynamic correlation between writing performance of different level students and their motivation was ignored.Given the potentials of multiple evaluation,these drawbacks are the impetus for further exploration.