A Study Of Automated Essay Scoring And Human Scoring Influence On Chinese Efl Learners’Writing Performance And Motivation

At present, the situation of college students’English proficiency in China is not optimistic. Although some researchers have made significant achievements in improving English teaching quality, it is still a weak point in the whole teaching process. Thus, we need to find other efficient ways to make improvement. Based on the theories of formative assessment and process approach, automated essay scoring system might be a breakthrough. By providing detailed feedback automatically, it becomes gradually popular among teachers. Since it has just come out, many researchers keep skepticism toward it. In this thesis, the author tries to explore the real function of AES, along with that of teachers’written feedback to find their respective advantages and seek a way to combine them together in the English writing teaching.The author carries longitudinal comparisons to find the influence of automated essay scoring and human scoring on the writing performance and motivation. Pigai is used as the AES tool in this experiment.117students from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications attend the research,65students from the experimental group and52from the control group. Six writing tasks, four questionnaires and an interview are conducted in the study. Paired-sample T-test and frequency procedure are applied to analyze the data. Through data analysis, the author gets the answers of three questions put forward in this paper. First, both groups have significant improvement in their writing performance, with the control group on grammar and organization and the experimental one on grammar and vocabulary. Second, different ways of feedback do have different influence on students’writing motivation. Third, most students have a positive attitude toward automated feedback and teachers’written feedback, regarding the two ways of feedback important in improving their writing proficiency.At the end of the thesis, the author suggests that English teachers should consider combining the two ways together in the writing teaching, giving full play of Pigai’s role in grammar and vocabulary and teacher’s role in organization and consent. Meanwhile, teachers should pay much attention to how to utilize the feedback to stimulate students to write. The author hopes that the combination of AES and human scoring will help make great improvement in English writing teaching in China. Due to the time and condition, the thesis has its limitations and further studies are needed.