The Effects Of Positive Self-evaluation On College Students’ Writing Self-efficacy And Writing Performance

English writing ability is the reflection of English comprehensive competence.College English Curriculum Requirements released in2007stipulated clear requestfor the college students’ English writing. College English writing is an important partof college English teaching and learning, however, it is the Achilles’ heel. In practicalEnglish teaching, the author finds that a large number of students lack writing inspiredenthusiasm and writing confidence, even some students are afraid of writing, thustheir writing performance relatively lag behind the standard level. What’s more, thespecific EFL writing course is not opened. The revision of students’ writing istime-consuming and the heavy workload of writing correction often makes teachersfeel unable to endure. Therefore, it is important and necessary to find a new solutionto develop students’writing self-efficacy and improve students’writing performance.As a part of formative evaluation, self-evaluation means students themselves asevaluation subject evaluate their own learning process. It is beneficial for students’self-awareness, self-control, self-feedback, and self-development. In recent years,more and more researchers explore the effect of self-evaluation on EFL learning. Thepositive self-evaluation in writing refers to students’ positive judgments of theirwritings--an appraisal by a student of his or her own writing. By referring to literaturereview, the author finds that there are few studies about the effect of self-evaluationon English writing self-efficacy and writing performance and the studies about theeffect of positive self-evaluation on English writing self-efficacy and writingperformance are fewer.The present study is conducted to explore the effects of positive self-evaluationon college students’ English writing self-efficacy and writing performance, and therelationship between the writing self-efficacy and writing performance. It aims toanswer the following three questions:(1) What are the effects of positive self-evaluation on college students’ writingself-efficacy?(2) What are the effects of positive self-evaluation on college students’ writing performance?(3) What is the relationship between college students’ English writingself-efficacy and their writing performance?Eighty-four freshmen coming from two parallel natural classes who major inphysics from Shandong Normal University were invited as participants. Class one wasthe control class in which the students were not required to make the positiveself-evaluation after writing while Class two was the experimental class in which thestudents were required to make the positive self-evaluation after writing. In the firstweek, a writing level test was carried out in the two classes and then a questionnaireabout the English writing self-efficacy was handed out to all the students. In thesecond week, all the students in the two classes were trained to make positiveself-evaluation. After training, the students in Class one were told to make the positiveself-evaluation on their own compositions voluntarily in the future writing while thestudents in Class two were required to make positive self-evaluation on their owncompositions each time in the future writing. After fourteen weeks of experiment, awriting level test was conducted respectively in the two classes and the students in thetwo classes are asked to answer the post-questionnaire which was related to students’writing self-efficacy. In the end of the semester, thirty students which were chosen atrandom from EC were interviewed in order to know their opinions on positiveself-evaluation. With the help of SPSS13.0, the present study came to the followingconclusion:(1) After the positive self-evaluation treatment, the students both in CC and ECmade improvement in their writing self-efficacy, while the writing self-efficacy ofstudents in EC appeared stronger. In other words, positive self-evaluation treatmentdid improve college students’writing self-efficacy.(2) After the positive self-evaluation treatment, the students in EC made greaterprogress than the CC in terms of holistic score, content, organization, grammar,vocabulary and mechanics.(3) In terms of the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writingperformance, the study indicated that writing self-efficacy was positively correlated to writing performance. In other words, the students with higher writing self-efficacywill perform better in their English writing.According to the results of the study, it is feasible and necessary to apply positiveself-evaluation to college English writing teaching and learning. In this paper, theauthor also puts forward some pedagogical implications for writing teaching. At thesame time, some limitations of this study are summarized and some suggestions forthe future studies are provided.