The Influence Of Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment On The Development Of Middle School Students' English Writing Ability

Testing is an indispensable means to check the quality of foreign language teaching,and in China it is usually put into use of selecting qualified personnel.According to A Brief Introduction to the Enrollment Examination from Middle School Graduates to High School in Chongqing in 2017(the Introduction in brief),the scores of multiple choices have been reduced 2 points,and the scores of the writing have been correspondingly added 2 points.Therefore,it can be concluded the weighting of “writing” has been increased by the Examination,which challenges students' present English writing ability.As a consequence,it is a necessity to research how to improve middle school students' English writing ability.At the same time,Dynamic Assessment,as one of the most promising ways to stimulate students' learning attitude,which is discussed in numerous educational literature,and Diagnostic Assessment,which focuses on mistakes in learners' learning process and find accordingly remedies,have long been valued by the testing community.Consequently,in this study,these two testing methods and Vygotsky's ZPD are combined to score the writing tasks in an attempt to solve the following two questions:(1)According to the Middle School Entrance Examination based on the criterion-referenced test(academic examination),are these scoring criteria of the writing tasks used in this study valid? To what extent are they effective?(2)According to such criteria,how can Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment be adopted in this research to promote the writing ability of middle school students?The scoring criteria adopted in this study is based on the requirements of the five-level target of language skills for middle school students in the Compulsory School English Curriculum Standards,combining Carroll's two-dimensional framework of test specifications,the research on the backwash effects of rating criteria by Chen Xiaokou,Lu Shenglu,etc.In specific,they conclude task achievement,lexical resource,grammatical range and accuracy,cohesion and coherence,hand-writing and format of writing tasks.And they value 4,4,4,4,and 2 points accordingly(20 points in total).Possibly,it is helpful to promote the perfection of the assessment itself,to help teachers regard the exam from a scientific perspective,and to instruct teachers to carry out teaching practice.36 students(16 boys and 20 girls in specific)in grade nine are concerned in this study,which come from the same class in one of the middle schools in Yubei,Chongqing,and their grades are on average level in grade nine.In order to verify the construct validity of sub-items and to explore how Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment can promote the writing ability of middle school students,this study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the collected data.For the first question,quantitative analysis is used by means of SPSS 19.0 data analysis software for data analysis and statistics.And there are mainly 4 procedures:(1)The author inspects the construct validity of writing task in this class by using linear regression equation and factor analysis.(2)Six linear regression analysis that are made on each writing task combined with case studies to explore which sub-item has better impact on the total score(writing ability)than others on every writing task,and to find out the changes of students' writing ability.(3)Univariate analysis and Pearson correlation analysis are made for students in different levels to observe the changes of their writing ability in different latitudes under the influence of Dynamic Diagnosis Assessment.(4)Independent samples t test and univariate analysis are conducted to explore the influence of analytic scoring on the writing ability of students in different genders under the influence of Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment.In addition,for the second question,the author adopts the method of qualitative analysis to illustrate the question detailedly.In specific,timed writing,interviews,classroom observation are employed,and some relative results of data analysis from the first question are helpful to explain question two.According to proposed questions above,the main findings are as follows:(1)The five factors used in this study predict as large as 62.76% of students' writing ability,indicating that the sub-items of writing tasks in this study reflect the construct validity in a good manner and they are in good internal consistencies.And all these correlation coefficients range from 0.283 to 0.826,indicating that the correlations among the five items and that between each sub-item and total score are relatively significant.Besides,Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment has a positive influence on the development of students' writing ability at different levels: students with higher degree of English have made a relatively smaller progress(but still in developing)in English writing;students in middle level have improved greater;and students in lower level have improved to a certain extent.What's more,this research has different effects on students' writing ability in different genders: the influence on the writing ability of girls is greater than that of boys.(2)Based on the theory of ZPD,Dynamic Assessment,and Diagnostic Assessment,this study carries on timed writing with analytic scoring on the basis of fixed scoring standards by two raters.Then the author puts forward accordingly suggestions in the light of the content of each writing task and sub-item scores.In rapid sequence,the author analyzes integrity writing situation of the whole class by SPSS 19.0 and sends information back to the teacher.Then the teacher comments on their writing tasks on the whole.Later,students amend their own compositions within suggestions and build up their own writing structures.Generally speaking,English teachers can easily recognize problems in teaching through Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment,and adjust their teaching strategies timely.Meanwhile,students can also sum up experience to make up the deficiencies,and improve their learning strategies.The implications of the present research are divided into the following four aspects:(1)The rating scales of the English writing task should be more specific and comprehensive to ensure the appropriateness of scoring.(2)This study provides a reformed model for English teachers to score students' composition.(3)English teachers should be aware of teaching students in accordance of their aptitude in latter teaching.(4)Students can develop their English writing skills by themselves through good learning methods,such as reading extensively,collecting beautiful expressions and imitating.In the end,the paper also illustrates the shortcomings and suggestions for further improvement of this research.