A Study On The Application Of Dynamic Assessment To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

As a creative process of using language,writing is always regarded by many teachers as the most difficult one to acquire in the four language skills.Writing teaching,correction,assessment and feedback entail a lot of efforts from teachers.Burdened by various teaching tasks,most teachers tend to spend more time in writing teaching.The process of writing assessment is often confined to a single form of written evaluation.The content of assessment is often result-oriented,which is not conducive to the improvement of teaching strategies and the development of students' writing competence.In order to improve this situation,this thesis introduces the theory of dynamic assessment(DA)into English writing teaching and assessment in junior high school,and explores the strategies and mechanisms of English writing teaching with the intervention of DA.This thesis is grounded in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Feuerstein's theory of mediated learning experience.After a large number of domestic and foreign literatures are consulted,it is found that some research on the application of DA in second language teaching is still in the phase of theory.Empirical studies on the application of DA in writing teaching mostly focus on grammar in writing,or on senior high school students or college students as research subjects.Therefore,this thesis takes the sixth graders in junior high school in Shanghai as the research subjects,and explores the approach to integrating DA into the revising stage of writing teaching process and its possible influence,that is,considers the following three research questions:(1)To what degree does DA help motivate students in their writing?(2)In what aspect(s)can DA benefit teachers with their writing teaching at the revising stage?(3)Can DA actually lead to more growth in students' writing competence than Non-DA approach?Centering on the above three questions,the author carries out teaching experiments for one semester in combination with two major DA modes.The procedure mainly includes: previous literature research on relevant theories and practices at home and abroad;then a questionnaire survey among students and interviews with teachers to determine the research focus and steps;tests for students before and after the teaching experiment;the other questionnaire survey among students and interviews with teachers after the teaching experiment.Meanwhile,the relevant information such as text and data is collected,and with the help of data analysis software,the qualitative analysis of text and quantitative analysis of statistics are carried out.From the qualitative description and data processing results,it is found that the application of DA in English writing teaching at the revising stage can significantly motivate students' writing initiative,which is especially shown in the improvement of writing interest and writing habits;teachers should adopt both the interventionist DA and interactionist DA so that students can internalize rules and stimulate their potential under the appropriate guidance of teachers and in the rational evaluation from peers;in contrast to the control class with Non-DA approach,the students in the experimental class have significantly improved their test performance and writing competence.They not only lag behind those in the control class,but also have deeper internalization in understanding the requirement of writing content.These findings imply the success of the teaching experiment and the effectiveness of applying DA in English writing teaching in junior high school.It provides much methodological reference and sharing for future research on English writing teaching in junior high school.