The Application Of Dynamic Assessment To English Writing Teaching In Junior Middle School

The traditional writing assessments mainly focus on the results but neglect students' development on learning potential in the process of writing,which has no positive effect on the related performance.Therefore,it is very necessary to introduce a new method of assessment.In recent years,Dynamic Assessment(DA)has become a hot research topic in the field of foreign language teaching abroad.However,through the review of the relevant studies at home and abroad,the author found that the researches of DA in China are relatively rare and most of them are limited to the theoretical discussions,which are lack empirical data.And studies in our country failed to provide detailed and practical steps of dynamic assessment and there were very few relevant experimental researches on the application pf DA in Junior Middle School.Therefore,the author applied the theories of DA into English writing teaching in Junior Middle School to gain an useful experience for English writing teaching.The theoretical basis was the Zone of Proximal Development and Mediated Learning Experience in this thesis,and the author applied the Dynamic Assessment to the English writing teaching to carry out the experiment.This study is to verify two questions by experiments:(l)Does DA have a positive effect on students' writing scores?(2)Does DA have a positive effect on students' attitudes towards English writing?The participants of the experiment were from two normal classes in Grade Nine of NO.49 Junior Middle School of Baotou.And there were 40 students in each class.This study consisted of three stages: before the experiment,while the experiment and after the experiment,lasting eight weeks.Before the experiment,the author conducted pre-test and pre-questionnaires about writing attitudes towards English writing in the two classes.At the while experiment,the dynamic assessment method was used in the experimental class for writing training,whereas the regular assessment method was still used in the control class for writing training.After the experiment,the two classes were tested again as post-test and the second questionnaires were conducted.The two tests were to verify whether the dynamic assessment had a significant effect on students' writing scores and the two questionnaires were to verify the dynamic assessment had a significant effect on students' attitudes towards English writing.The writing scores were divided into two parts,which are the total scores and the four respective scores from four aspects.The four aspects consist of writing length,writing content,writing structure,writing language.At last,the collected data were sorted out and analyzed,then the conclusions are drawn as follows:(1)the writing scores of the pre-test are the same in the two classes,which shows the students' level of writingin the experimental class is the same as that in the control class.But the writing scores of the post-test in the experimental class are significantly higher than those in the control class after the experiment,which indicates that dynamic assessment has a positive effect on students' writing scores.(2)Through questionnaires,it can be seen that students' writing attitudes have been changed significantly,which indicates that dynamic assessment has a positive effect on students' attitudes towards writing.Because of the small number of samples and a short period,there are some limitations in the experiment.However,the study is a new attempt for dynamic assessment in English writing teaching,which is the useful evidence for foreign language teaching practice.