Dynamic Assessment In College English Writing Class

Over the years, summative tests prevail in college English writing classes all overmainland China. With uniform content and mechanical criteria, such assessment modesfocus too much on the learning results, ignoring the learning process, thus they are notconducive to promoting the development of the students’ writing competence. Issued bythe Ministry of Education in2007, College English Curriculum Requirements specificallysupplement the contents of the teaching evaluation, with emphasis on the procedure anddevelopmentality of assessment. Therefore, it is high time to explore and establish a newassessment mode in college English writing class.Based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind (SCT hereafter), and with referenceto the latest development of assessment theories both at home and abroad, threeconstructional principles for writing assessment were proposed in light of process writingtheories: the integration of assessment and instruction, the design of graduated andserialized interaction, and the improvement of interactive environment. Based on suchthree principles, a dynamic assessment (DA hereafter) mode was constructed for collegeEnglish writing classes, incorporating such interventional teaching measures as thedevelopment of a network-based EFL composition teaching system, the design ofscaffolding mediational strategies for each stage of writing process, the formulation ofdynamic comprehensive essay scoring criteria, and the establishment of a relevantreference resources corpus. After a two-semester small-scale experiment with51non-English-major undergraduates from Luoyang Normal University, the students’ writingbehavior changes in the framework of such a DA mode were investigated thoroughly bothquantitatively and qualitatively with the help of self-designed questionnaires concerningthe students’ knowledge of English writing together with their writing strategies andmotives, providing answers to the four questions put forward in this dissertation:Research Question1: In what way have the interventional efforts in the framework ofsuch a DA mode affected the students’ understanding of English writing, their writingstrategies and initiatives? Research Question2: In what way have the interventional efforts in the frameworkof such a DAmode affected the students’English writing performance?Research Question3: In what way have the interventional efforts in the framework ofsuch a DA mode affected the students’ writing behavior at each stage of Englishwriting process?Research Question4: In what way have the teachers and students appreciated theinterventional efforts in the framework of such a DAmode?According to the statistical analyses, the interventional efforts in the framework ofsuch a DA mode have affected the students’understanding of English writing, their writingstrategies and initiatives in the following ways:1) Such efforts have stimulated thestudents’ interest in English writing, making more students aware of the importance oftheir initiatives in the assessment of their own writings. Consequently the students nolonger simply resort to their teachers’ help for the evaluation of their writing assignments,and embrace peer feedback and the online automated essay scoring tool as possiblealternatives instead.2) Such efforts have improved the students’ use of writing strategies,their use of daily writing strategies and revision strategies in particular. Compared withthose higher proficiency students (HPSs hereafter), lower proficiency students (LPSshereafter) have made more remarkable progress in their adoption of daily writing strategieswith the help of such interventional measures.3) Such efforts have promoted the overallEnglish writing motive level of students of different proficiency, with greater influenceexerted on the enhancement of the students’intrinsic interest in English writing.Statistical analyses of the data indicate that such DA intervention practice hasimproved the English writing performance of the students of different proficiency,especially in their article length, ideas and language richness, but LPSs need more DAinterventions for their improvement in language accuracy.Microgenetic analyses reveal that in the framework of such a DA mode, the students’writing behavior changes in the following ways:1) In their daily writing, with thescaffolding DA intervention in various forms, the students’ intrinsic interest in Englishwriting has been inspired, which maintains their efforts invested continually into theirEnglish study, and consequently their ZPDs in English writing have been further developed,leading to the overall improvement of their English competence.2) At the prewriting stage,such DAinterventional efforts have not only focused their attention on their influence upon the students, but also committed themselves to the identification and diagnosis of thestudents’ problems in English writing. And such scaffolding interventional efforts asbrainstorming activities can stimulate the student’s innovative thinking by providing themwith both scaffolding and means of building such scaffolding by themselves.3) Atpeer-feedback stage, with the teacher’s intervention, the students have learned to providetheir peers with feedback of better quality, and meanwhile improved their command ofEnglish writing. Through self-reflection, HPSs have learned to seek the teachers’scaffolding interventions on their own initiative until they have internalized suchinterventions and gradually transfer what they have internalized to the performance ofsome other writing tasks, and then such competence can be externalized in the form oftheir intervention in their peers’ writing activities. With the specific and lucidpeer-feedback guidelines and criteria provided by the teacher, LPSs have learned toimprove their command of English writing step by step.4) At the revision stage, suchscaffolding DAinterventions provided by the teacher have helped the LPSs transform frompassive imitation to their active quest for strategies scaffolding on their own initiative.Massive reference resources and appropriate writing strategies instruction can broaden theHPSs’ ZPDs in English writing rapidly, leading them to stride forward for higher goals.5)At the post-writing�'independent-writing stage, by emulating independently the modelwritings provided by the teachers, HPSs have learned to take their peers’model writings as“the guidepost type” scaffolding on the way to higher level of writing, and initiated thequest for more scaffolding to enrich themselves, and therefore the pivot of the interventionin their writing is on their selective use of such resources, escorting them in the processfrom other-regulation (in the form of observation and emulation) to self-regulation untilcomplete internalization (taking what they have learned from such model writings for theirown use). LPSs have learned to count on the teacher’s timely encouragement and modelingtutoring (in the form of the preparation of detailedly-edited model writings) for direct orindirect interventional instructions.In addition, both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate that the overwhelmingmajority of the students in the experiment are satisfied with such a DA mode, especiallywith the reference writing resources among the four major groups of interventionsprovided in the experiment. And all the teachers involved feel that while helping thestudents, they have made great progress in their writing instruction practice, too. The success of the DA mode for college English writing class designed in thisdissertation lies in its construction of an English writing learning community, in which notonly the teachers but also the students have performed an active role, along with a moresensible distribution of their jobs among themselves. As a result, both sides are stimulatedto take active part in such a culturally constructed activity as writing, in which betterinteraction has been formed among students and between the teachers and students.The successful implementation of such a DA mode will hopefully help to changecurrent summative-tests-dominant situation in college English teaching in China, andreduce the negative effect of current ways of evaluation on the students’ English study,making assessment procedural, developmental, and diversified, with focus on pertinentlearning strategies interventions, the building of relevant interventional resources corpuses,and prompt remedial instructions, so that the all-around development of the students’English competence would be promoted fundamentally. The innovation of this study lies inthe following four aspects:1) Based on the definations of and studies concerning DA bothat home and abroad, a working definition of DA was put forward along with itsinterpretation in the context of this study;2) It has introduced for the first time the DAtheory into Chinese EFL writing teaching practice on the tertiary level;3) It hasconstructed a theoretical DA framework and its application mode pertinent for collegeEnglish writing instruction in China;4) It has designed systematic scaffoldinginterventional strategies for EFL writing classes, probed into the key elements to successfulDA implementation, and verified the feasibility of DA theories in the field of collegeEnglish writing instruction.However, because at present the western SLA researchers have just stepped into thisdomain, and few scholars have ever attempted the design of a procedural DA mode in thefield of domestic college English writing teaching, the DAsystem designed in this study isexpected to be verified and improved in the long-term teaching practice. For further study,a more thorough study of the DA for college English writing class in a larger scale mightbe realized with the help of an excellent online automated essay scoring system and corpusanalysis software, with reference to the current study of the English writing performancemeasures. Furthermore, the time span of the experiment can also be extended to track thewhole process of the students’ development of English writing competence, so that a morecomplete picture of DA together with its interventional procedure can be observed in this field.In short, this study is expected to provide more options for the reform of collegeEnglish teaching assessment system, and contribute to the exploration of new methods andways for the reform of the entire EFL teaching system in China. The research results mightprovide theoretical reference and practical support for other similar institutions in China,and possibly be enlightening for the domestic promotion of DAin other disciplines.