A Study On The Effectiveness Of Negotiation-based Assessment In EFL Writing

The importance of teaching writing has been commonly recognized since writing was first introduced in language classrooms. With the shift of teaching paradigm from the product-oriented writing to the process-oriented writing, negotiation has been widely used in the context over the past decades. In China, where language teaching is characterized with large classes, negotiation-based assessment, an effective combination of traditional teacher assessment and peer assessment, is one of the solutions to the deficiency of the traditional writing assessment method. Yet many English writing teachers and English learners in China still seem not to be very familiar with this activity at present, and few empirical studies have investigated the impact of it in the foreign language context.Many college English teachers find marking students' writing essays to be a tedious and unrewarding chore. While it is a crucial aspect of writing process, teachers' diligent attention and careful comments seem to bring about very few improvements in their students' subsequent work. How can EFL writing teachers aid their students in promoting writing ability through marking their students' compositions? This thesis puts forward an alternative way of evaluating students' writing compositions, that is, negotiation-based assessment.The purpose of the research is to investigate the impact of negotiation-based assessment on EFL learners' writing development. Three questions were addressed: 1) Can the negotiation-based assessment improve Chinese EFL students' ability to evaluate writing? 2) Can the negotiation-based assessment contribute to produce the English writing of better quality? 3) Can the negotiation-based assessment make a positive influence upon the Chinese EFL students' attitude to writing assessment?The present research involved 70 non-English major freshmen from Wuhan Institute of Shipbuilding Technology, who then were randomly assigned into two groups. Their writing compositions were treated differently in terms of ways of giving feedback. For the experimental group, students' writing compositions were discussed through negotiation-based assessment; for the control group, it received the teacher's feedback. The experiment lasted one semester.The study collected data from two questionnaires, the results of two writing tests, the teacher's and students' comments on peers writing. In addition, there were some necessary statistical instruments used to analyze the data collected that are Independent Samples T-test, Paired Samples T-test, and Chi-Square Tests. Frequency count of students' response to questionnaire showed that more students in the experimental group than those in the control group favored writing and revision. Students viewed negotiation-based assessment as useful and helpful to the improvement of their writing quality. An analysis of pre- and post- tests revealed that students from the experimental group made more progress than those from the control group.The findings of the study demonstrated the positive effect of the use of negotiation-based assessment in EFL writing class. Hence, the study was capable of giving some implications on the teaching of college English writing.