An Empirical Study On The Application Of AES System In High School English Writing

Writing proficiency is an important indicator of students’ English proficiency.English writing is one of the five basic and essential skills for English-as-a-foreign language(EFL)learners and it plays a significant role in students’ English learning,written communication and intercultural communication.With the development of technology,educators advocate the application of new artificial intelligence(AI)technology to conduct blended learning to promote effective learning of students.Besides,English composition score accounts for a large proportion in the total score of the college entrance examination of English subject.English composition scoring standards are becoming higher,so the importance of high school English writing teaching is self-evident.For EFL students,writing plays a fundamental role in their English learning throughout high school as well as their further English learning after graduating from high school.However,related surveys provide evidence that the effect of English writing teaching in high schools is not satisfying.With the progress of technology,the emergence of the automated essay scoring(AES)system brings vitality to English writing teaching in high schools.This study is to apply the automated essay scoring(AES)system to the teaching of English writing in senior high school to explore its effectiveness in enhancing students’ English writing motivation,accuracy and proficiency.In this case 98 students from two classes in senior grade two of Chaoyang Middle School in Chongqing are selected and being the subjects of this research.The two classes are randomly divided into experimental class and control class.Students in the experimental class apply automated essay scoring system to finish the writing tasks while students in the control group follow the traditional writing form to finish writing tasks.Besides,three questions are investigated in this research:(1)Does the application of AES system have any impact on students’ motivation for English writing? If yes,what impact?(2)What impact does the application of AES system have on students’ English writingaccuracy?(3)What impact does the application of AES system have on students’ writing proficiency? In the three months’ experiment,every student is asked to hand in eight English writings in total.Experimental group students hand in online writings while the control group students hand in written writings.Only the students in the experimental group can get the feedback from AES system.The results suggest that after using AES system(Pigai.org.),experimental class students’ learning motivation for English writing,English writing accuracy and English writing proficiency are enhanced.Horizontal and vertical comparisons are adopted in this study.In the horizontal comparison,the learning motivation,writing accuracy and writing proficiency of the experimental group are much higher than the control group at the end of the experiment.In the vertical comparison,experimental groups’ motivation,writing accuracy and writing proficiency of the posttest are higher than the pretest.Students’ motivation is reflected by their interest and confidence in English writing and self-evaluation of their writing proficiency.Students’ writing proficiency is reflected by the writing scores,writing fluency and language complexity.Additionally,the use of automated essay scoring system also helps teachers remove the heavy workload.This study not only enriches the teaching theory of foreign language writing,but also offers empirical evidence for educators and English teachers in schools to better shape the teaching of English writing,which has great theoretical and practical significance.