An Action Research On Applying Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment To Teaching English Majors' Writing

Writing is the main way for English learners to use English.It is also an effective standard for measuring the comprehensive ability of learners' language.English writing ability is very important.However,English majors in independent colleges often feel lack of words to write and their writings have many language errors.Students have negative writing attitudes and lack of revision awareness.English writing teaching is time-consuming and inefficient.These problems are related to traditional writing feedback teaching.Feedback is an important factor which can affect students' writing ability.However,due to the limited time and the energy of teachers with heavy teaching tasks,it is difficult to give timely and effective feedback to students' English writing.Therefore,it is imperative to choose a reasonable and efficient writing feedback.Teacher-student collaborative assessment(TSCA for short)can response students' output timely and efficiently through organizing and integrating different modes of feedback.In order to improve the writing status of English majors in independent colleges,and improve their English writing abilities,so the researcher used TSCA in an action research among sophomores to enhance their English writing ability.36 English majors in Class A were involved,who are in an independent college in Anhui Province now.The study lasted 15 weeks with three-round action plans which were designed according to the pre-class,in-class and after-class steps of TSCA.The study intends to answer three research questions:(1)What changes have been made to the students' writing after finishing the action research with TSCA?(2)Can writing teaching action research with TSCA improve the students'English writing ability?(3)What are students' attitudes towards TSCA?At the beginning of the research,students were asked to conduct a questionnaire survey and pre-writing test to determine the focuses of the three-round action research.Following the three steps:planning,implementation and reflection,each round of the research assessed only one focus which has been selected.In the period of the action,the action plan was adjusted during different stages of the process.Compared the two data collections of questionnaires and the scores of pretest and posttest,findings of this study are as follows:(1)The writing teaching with TSCA fosters positive attitudes to English writing among students.It also strengthens students' interest and confidence in English writing.At the same time,it also enhances students'awareness of writing modification and enthusiasm for revision.(2)TSCA is an effective way in improving students' writing level.First of all,the student's writing performance has improved significantly.The overall average score increased from 11.11 before the study to 14.97.Secondly,there is a certain progress in grammar and content expression.(3)86.5%of students hold a positive view on TSCA.And they agree with the beneficial effect of TSCA on English writing ability.This thesis also expounds the enlightenment and limitations of the action research.It puts forward some suggestions for the writing teaching with TSCA so that the researchers can integrate TSCA with writing teaching in the future.