The Effects Of AWE System On English Writing Ability Of Students With Different Language Proficiency

In the field of second language acquisition,second language writing has been a hot research theme.The topic of how to efficiently improve students' English writing ability has always been attracting extensive attention.With the rapid development of computer-assisted language learning,a number of Automated Writing Evaluation(AWE)systems have been brought into existence and are increasingly adopted in writing instruction.Under this circumstance,the research of the effects of AWE systems on students' English writing ability has become a heated topic in recent years.However,how AWE systems exert influence on students with different language proficiency has not been widely investigated.Therefore,this study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the effects of Juku AWE system on writing ability of students with different language proficiency in respect of accuracy,fluency,syntactic complexity and general quality of writing.The sixty participants,who were freshmen of non-English majors from Shanghai Jiao Tong University,were divided into groups of higher and lower proficiency.They were required to finish five writing tasks and then take a questionnaire survey and an interview.The comparative analysis of the writing tasks shows that Juku has different influences on English writing ability of students with different language proficiency.It benefits the students with lower language proficiency more than those with higher proficiency because the former make significant progress in accuracy,fluency and general quality of writing,while the latter have no significant progress in the above four aspects.Analyses of data from the questionnaire and the interview indicate that students with different language proficiency hold different attitudes toward Juku.Generally speaking,students with lower proficiency are more positive to the effects of Juku.Therefore,instructors,when applying the AWE system like Juku into teaching English writing,should firstly consider individual differences of learners,and then make full use of the benefits of Juku to compensate for its shortcomings,so as to make it better assist teachers in English writing instruction.