A Study On The Effects Of Diagnostic Self-Assessment On High School Students’Writing

For a long time,the assessment of writing seems to focus too much on the writing products while neglecting the writing processes and the active roles of the students.Issued in 2017,Senior High School English Curriculum Standards advocates the integration of teaching,learning and assessing.It proposes diversified ways of assessments,values the facilitative effects of assessments on teaching and learning,and highlights the important roles students can play in assessments.Based on autonomous learning theory,constructivist learning theory,and output hypothesis,this study attempts to explore the effects of diagnostic self-assessment on high school students’ overall writing performance,and in the following five dimensions:content,language quality,organization,writing conventions and writing strategies.The study attempts to answer the following three research questions:(1)What are the students’ attitudes toward diagnostic self-assessments and how do they use them?(2)What are the effects of diagnostic self-assessment on high school students’ English writing competence?(3)What are the differences in the effects of diagnostic self-assessment on students of different English writing levels?In this study,a total of 135 students from three classes in the third grade of a senior high school in Zibo,Shandong Province participated in a 12-week experiment.During the experiment,the experimental class A used diagnostic self-assessments of English writing,while the experimental class B used non-diagnostic self-assessments of English writing,and the control class did not participate in any self-assessment activities.At the end of the experiment,students’ writing test scores,written texts from the tests and interview data were collected and systematically analyzed.The research findings include that:(1)students’ attitudes toward diagnostic selfassessments need to be cultivated and their ability to use diagnostic self-assessments needs to be improved;(2)diagnostic self-assessments can effectively improve students’ writing competence,including the integral writing competence,writing content,language quality and writing strategies;(3)diagnostic self-assessments have different effects on students of different writing levels,with more pronounced effects on students of low to moderate writing levels than on students of high writing levels.This study can enrich the current practice of diagnostic assessment and selfassessment in high school English writing teaching and thus has practical and referential value for high school English writing teaching and writing assessment.