An Experimental Study Of Peer Assessment On Students’ Writing Competence In Different Writing Proficiency In Senior High School

Writing is the most difficult skill to master among the four basic language skills(listening,speaking,reading,writing).Recently,how to improve students’ writing competence had become a hot research topic in the area of English writing teaching.The “General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition)”clearly states that teachers should “handle the relationship among teaching,learning and assessment so as to achieve the purpose of promoting teaching and learning through assessment”.Moreover,teaching assessment should take formative assessment as dominant factor and summative assessment as supplementary factor.Recently,teaching reformation made little effect.The writing situation is not optimistic:Teachers do not pay much attention to writing teaching,the assessment model is single and students treat writing negatively.Therefore,finding an effective way to change this situation is the primary task for English teachers.In recent years,the application of peer assessment in the teaching of English writing has gotten widespread concern and attention of scholars at home and abroad.The study found that most of the research on peer assessment is carried out in ESL environment.And most of the research subjects of the peer assessment are undergraduates.There are relatively few experimental studies on high students as research subjects.What’s more,the research of writing teaching on different writing proficiency of senior high school students is much less.And at present,there is little research done in this subjects in domestic.This study intends to apply peer assessment into English writing teaching and try to find out whether peer assessment is an effective way to improve senior high school students’ writing competence.Two research questions are formulated:(1)What are the effects of peer assessment on improving senior high school students’ English writing competence in different writing proficiency?(2)What are the attitudes of students towards peer assessment?40 students of senior one,who come from Shijiazhuang Number XX SeniorHigh School,have been selected as the research subjects.By a pre-questionnaire and a pretest paper,the author knows about the situation of English writing teaching in senior high school and students attitudes towards peer assessment.Through pretest scores,the subjects were divided into high proficiency group and low proficiency group(high proficiency group has 19 students and low proficiency group has 21students).By using SPSS 19.0,an Independent-Samples t-test was performed and showed that the two proficiency groups were significantly different in terms of their test scores(P<.05).Then,the author carries out an 8-week teaching experiment.At the end of teaching experiment,the author conducts a post-questionnaire and a post-test.There are four conclusions: I Both high proficiency group and low proficiency group have improved in English writing after applying peer assessment to English writing teaching.II High proficiency group make significant progress in content and lexis of their writings.III Low proficiency group make great progress in content,lexis and grammar of their writings.IV Most students like peer assessment and think it is useful for their writing.Most students think that they and their peers have the ability to assess their writings,but a small number of students have an uncertain attitude towards their abilities.This research can be an example of the study in senior high school students’ English writing and enrich study data.It provides an efficient method for the teaching and learning of English writing in senior high school.