The Application Of Peer Mediation Based On Dynamic Assessment In The Teaching Of Writing For Low-and-mid-proficiency EFL Postgraduates

Writing not only reflects learners' comprehensive language performance,but also measures learning effect to a large extent.Therefore,L2 writing is an important research field in second language teaching and acquisition(Wang Hua,2011).For a long time,teacher has played a dominant role in the instruction of L2 writing in China.Due to the fact that the number of students in a writing class is relatively large,use of peers as a mediation source will certainly improve teaching effectiveness and efficiency.On the other hand,the current writing instruction is based on static assessment that emphasizes results and neglects learning process,failing to contribute to the development of students' writing performance(Zhang Yanhong,2012).In recent years,dynamic assessment,an effective supplement to the static assessment,has attracted researchers' attention in the field of L2 writing.Therefore,this paper intends to explore the application of peer mediation in the writing instruction for low-and-medium-level students through the implementation of dynamic assessment,which helps enrich existing research.By means of investigating the mediation process during the DA sessions and the mediation result after the DA implementation,this study attempts to answer the following three questions:1.What is the variation of mediational topics in the peer mediation process?2.What is the variation of mediational strategies in the peer mediation process?3.What is the impact of peer mediation on low-and-medium-proficiency learners' English writing performance?In this study,a writing class of first-year non-English postgraduates in Southeast University was chosen.There were altogether 12 groups with each group consisting of a student of high proficiency,a student of medium proficiency and a student of low proficiency.The high-proficiency students acted as the peer mediators to employ dynamic assessment on low-and-medium-proficiency students.The research procedure included a pre-test,four DA sessions,and a post-test,with recording,text transcription,an online writing analyzer,and SPSS as the research instruments.After summarizing and analyzing the mediation process and the mediation result,the researcher presented the findings of this study as follows:(1)In the mediation process,the most frequently discussed meditational topics are grammar,vocabulary and format,while topics about content and organization are rarely discussed.As the implementation of dynamic assessment,the number of these five meditational topics gradually decreases over the four DA sessions.(2)In the mediation process,there are mainly five types of meditational strategies: a.the mediator indicates that something may be wrong;b.the mediator identifies the mistakes;c.the mediator provides metalinguistic clues;d.the mediator provides the correct form;e.the mediator explains the use of the correct form.As the implementation of dynamic assessment,the proportion of explicit strategies has slightly decreased,and the use of implicit strategies has increased slightly.(3)After the implementation of dynamic assessment,there is significant improvement in language accuracy,vocabulary complexity,and writing score for low-proficiency students,and students of medium proficiency has made remarkable progress in language accuracy and writing score.All in all,this study analyzes the features and changes of peer mediation in the mediation process,and verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of peers as the source of mediation,which provides empirical experience and reference for the application of peer mediation to L2 writing instruction.