A Study On The Scale Of English Writing Strategic Competence For Chinese Middle School Students

Language proficiency scale, which is also called language proficiency standard, is a series of descriptions of learner's language ability. The study of language competence scale has a history of nearly sixty years. Foreign studies on language competence scale have reached a mature stage, while corresponding. researches in China mostly focus on the methods and procedures of developing foreign language proficiency scales or the advantages and disadvantages of the scales. With regard to English writing strategic competence(EWSC), researches mostly concentrated on the investigation and analysis of the application of writing strategies, few explore the English writing strategic competence from the perspective of language proficiency scale. At present, China's Ministry of Education is committed to constructing China standards of English, under this background comes out this thesis whose research subject is Chinese middle school students and whose research purpose is to explore how to construct English writing strategic competence scale for middle school students.Based on Bachman's Communicative Language Ability(Bachman, 1996)and Hays & Flower's Cognitive Process Theory of Writing( Hayes & Flower,1981), this thesis attempts to answer two questions: 1) What are the dimensions of the EWSC scale for Chinese middle school students? 2) What are the levels of the EWSC scale for Chinese middle school students? To probe into the above questions, we take the following research procedures:First, we collect related descriptors from foreign language proficiency scales,the curriculum standards, teaching materials at home and abroad, foreign syllabuses, domestic testing outlines and Chinese periodical literature by way of literature review. All together 156 original descriptors are collected. Then,we make edition on these descriptors by deleting, combining, rewriting,translating etc. under the guidance of the five principles namely positiveness,definiteness, clarity, brevity and independence, and a three-element model. As a result, 95 descriptors remain. What comes next is the classification of descriptors. Based on the Cognitive Process Theory of Writing(Hayes &Flower, 1981), we divide the 95descriptors into three dimensions and define the planning strategy, translating strategy and reviewing strategy with reference to the strategic competence in communicative language ability. And the preliminary classification of descriptors is validated by inter-rater consistency test. Next, 95 descriptors are initially divided into five levels either by referring to the expert experience or by referring to the original positions of descriptors in the source scales. 22 experienced teachers are invited to rate the descriptors. The results are analyzed by MFRM and the levels of descriptors are decided based on the analysis.Research results are as follows: 1) There are three dimensions of EWSC scale for Chinese middle school students; namely planning, translating and reviewing. The frequency of each dimension is 24, 44 and 27 respectively. 2)There are three levels of EWSC scale, with low level containing 21 descriptors, intermediate level containing 63 descriptors and high level containing 9 descriptors. It is expected that this study can provide reference for the construction of China Standards of English, and guidance for the teaching, learning and assessment of English writing strategies.