An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Dynamic Assessment On The English Writing Self-Efficacy Of Junior High School Students

Writing is not merely a matter of cognitive processing but also involves emotional engagement.Enhancing students’ writing skills requires addressing their emotional concerns,particularly their English writing self-efficacy.Dynamic assessment(DA),as a novel approach to assessment,emphasizes individual learning processes and fosters the maximization of students’ learning potential within the teaching process,thus integrating teaching,learning,and assessment.Despite growing research interest in DA in education,existing empirical studies have primarily focused on students’ writing content,with limited exploration of the psychological factors that can impact writing performance.Therefore,this study seeks to extend prior research grounded in Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Feuerstein’s Structural Cognitive Modifiability Theory to investigate the effects of DA on the writing self-efficacy of junior high school students.The study aims to answer two primary research questions:(1)What are the effects of DA on junior high school students’ English writing self-efficacy?(2)What are the effects of DA on junior high school students with different writing proficiency levels in terms of English writing self-efficacy? To aid the author in answering the two research questions,a combination of two questionnaires and a semi-structured interview will be utilized in this study.Ninety students from two parallel classes in a junior high school located in Guangzhou are chosen as the research participants.Prior to the experiment,a pre-questionnaire is administered to all students to assess their writing self-efficacy level.Throughout the 12-week teaching experiment,the experimental group(EC)utilizes the DA model for teaching English writing,while the control group(CC)relies on the traditional teacher-centered assessment method.Following the experiment,all students complete a post-questionnaire,and a semi-structured interview is conducted with the EC.The principal findings based on the data analysis from both questionnaires and the interview can be summarized as follows: 1)The implementation of DA in writing teaching has proven to be crucial in enhancing the writing self-efficacy of junior high school students.Notably,students exhibited significant improvement in the two sub-dimensions of writing self-efficacy,namely writing task self-efficacy and writing skill self-efficacy,with a more pronounced effect observed in the latter;2)The utilization of DA writing teaching has a beneficial effect on the writing self-efficacy of students across varying levels of writing proficiency,with particular improvement observed in those in the middle-level and low-level groups.Conclusively,the utilization of DA in writing teaching has displayed substantial potential for improving students’ writing self-efficacy.Consequently,it is advised that educators contemplate integrating DA into writing instruction to further enhance students’ writing self-efficacy and writing interest.