A Microgenetic Study On The Application Of Dynamic Assessment In College English Writing Instruction

Teaching evaluation is not only the main means to evaluate classroom teaching,but also an important method to ensure teaching effects and promote learners' potential learning competence.For a long time,summative assessment has been applied widely in college English writing instruction in our country,which emphasizes learning outcomes while ignores learning process.This assessment is not conducive to the comprehensive development of learners' writing ability.Therefore,it is necessary to explore a new assessment of college English writing instruction.In recent decades,dynamic assessment(DA)has aroused attention in L2 pedagogy domain.By integrating assessment and instruction,it advocates promoting learner's potential development in the process of teacher-learner interaction.The present study applied DA into college English writing instruction,explored the process of DA and testified its effects on writing instruction through microgenetic method.This purpose is realized through the following research questions:1)What are the variation of teacher's mediational strategies and learner's responsive moves in terms of type and quantity during the dynamic assessment process?2)What is the impact of DA on learner's English writing proficiency?3)How does DA affect learner's English writing anxiety?The present study conducted five consecutive DA sessions on four second-year English majors.Each session consisted of pre-test,macro DA mediation,micro DA mediation and posttest.In the pretest,the four subjects were asked to write a composition in 30 minutes independently.In the following days,every subject received one-to-one macro DA mediation and micro DA mediation respectively,and then completed their revised drafts and final drafts.The first draft of each session was also the post-test writing of the previous session.All conversations were recorded.In addition,the subjects were required to complete a questionnaire about second language writing anxiety.At the end of this study,an interview was carried out.All the compositions,questionnaires and recording materials were used for experimental analysis.The findings of the present study indicated that the application of DA in college writing instruction was conducive to the promotion of learner's writing proficiency and the reduction of their writing anxiety.The specific results are presented in the following:1)DA is effective to enhance learner's potential development.During the DA meditational process,seven types of teacher's mediational strategies and five types of learner's responsive moves were concluded according to the level of explicitness of meditational strategy and learner's ability of error detection and correction.As the DA mediational process went on,less explicit strategies were required by learners and their ability of error correction were improved.2)DA can efficiently improve learner's writing proficiency.Through DA mediation,learner's writing performance got improved significantly in both content and structure.Accuracy and lexical complexity of language expression had marked improvement.Fluency and grammatical complexity didn't have obvious change.3)After DA mediation,learner's writing anxiety was reduced.The cognitive anxiety had obvious decrease.The somatic anxiety and avoidance behavior showed no obvious change.The present study provides more options for the teaching assessment of college English writing instruction,and offered empirical experience for the application of DA in writing instruction,and be possibly enlightening for the improvement of English writing proficiency and the reduction of English writing anxiety.