A Comparative Study Of Two Cooperative Peer Assessments For English Writing In Junior Middle School

English writing is a practical activity of using English knowledge comprehensively，and a skill of expressing thoughts creatively．As one of the basic language skills, itsimportance is acknowledged by foreign language teachers and learners. However，writinghas been very weak in China’s middle school English teaching. Therefore, exploring theeffective writing method is an arduous task for English teaching. With the new curriculumreform in primary and secondary schools, cooperative learning has been widely used inEnglish teaching. More and more teachers have participated in classroom practice ofcooperative learning and achieved good results, but there are only a few studies ofcooperative learning applied to English writing assessment in middle schools, and in thesefew studies, the cooperative groups are always divided according to the same principle---the members of each group were balanced with good and poor English learners workingtogether.This paper details the grouping of cooperative learning, using two different groupingways--a hierarchical group and a balanced group. It takes an experimental approach andtries to find out whether the two cooperative peer assessment methods can improve thestudents’ English writing, which grouping is more effective and preferred by students.The subjects of this study are students in Class3and Class4of Grade Eight fromHongze Experimental Middle School. In one term (4months), Class3students work indifferent hierarchical groups to implement peer assessment, while Class4students work indifferent balanced groups. The pre-questionnaire shows the students’ writing attitudes andthe writing problems they face. The post-questionnaire aims to understand the students’emotions on two kinds of peer assessments on English writing and which grouping theylike better. At last, we analyzed the pre-test and post-test data with SPSS19statisticalsoftware to test the validity of two kinds of grouping. Research results show that the two forms of cooperative peer assessments on writingcan both improve the students’ English writing, improve the students’ learning enthusiasmand reduce teachers’ workload. However, the hierarchical group is more effective inimproving intermediate students’ and beginners’ English writing scores, while the balancedgroup plays an important role in improving the writing of advanced students andintermediate students. Each group has its advantages. Moreover, the two experimentalclass students both accept their own cooperative peer assessment method and prefer theirown grouping. Of course, the two forms of group cooperation also have someshortcomings. The hierarchical cooperative peer assessment is not conducive to theimprovement of advanced students. It can make the beginners have a sense of inferiority intheir group and the students cannot participate equally in a group. The balancedcooperative peer assessment causes the groups of beginners have a sense of inferiority intheir class. It is not conducive to their improvement. And it is difficult to evaluate differentgroups because the students’ levels indifferent groups are not balanced.Research results also show us each of the two cooperative peer assessment methodshas its advantages and disadvantages, so in the future, we should combine the twogrouping ways in English writing teaching, make good use of their advantages and bypassthe disadvantages. And also, we teachers need to constantly improve our owncomprehensive qualities to enhance students’ self-learning abilities by using cooperativelearning better.