Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Research

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four basic language skills of English，which are the indispensable elements of English teaching in senior high school. Amongthese basic language skills in English learning，listening and reading are the receptiveskills，while speaking and writing belong to the productive skills. In practical teaching,the two kinds of skills are treated differently, because considerable time and energy arespent in teaching students' receptive skills but the productive skills, such as speaking andwriting, are always thought little of，especially writing. Although a majority of educatorshave been already aware of the significance of productive skills and have made greateffort to increase the proportion of productive skills in English teaching, however, theactual result and situation are not as optimistic as we estimate. English writing is reallyconsidered to be the most difficult productive skill for the students among the four basicskills (Huang Yuanshen, 2006). The common problem that appears in the students' writingare as follows: 1) An inadequate supplement of vocabulary and misuse of grammar; 2)Poor organization, non-logical relationship between sentence and sentence, paragraph andparagraph; 3) Chinglish; influence of Chinese grammar and commonly used pattems;4)Less diverse patterns.

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1.2 Purpose of the Research

The purpose of this research is to discuss the feasibility of DA in English writing insenior high school, which is proved to be an effective and efficient way by ZhangYanhong, 2012，in her doctoral thesis on DA in college English writing class. First of all,this study aims to find out whether DA can make an impact on the students' Englishwriting or not in the way of comparing DA and the traditional mode scientifically andobjectively. Besides, the finding of this research, afterwards，may provide the high schoolEnglish teachers with implication that leads them to reflect on the means they used toevaluate the students' writing, adjust their techniques and methods in teaching of writing.To improve the writing ability of the students, especially who are far beyond anauthentic language context，remains a complicated problem. In the process of innovationin teaching of English writing, it is of significance for teachers to probe which assessmentmethod is suitable for Chinese senior high school students and how to manipulate itefficiently and effectively.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky's cultural psychology or cultural-historical psychology, in the field ofapplied linguistics and second language acquisition, is acknowledged as socioculturaltheory(Lantolf&Thome，2006 ； Lantolf，2006). It is a theory about law of higher levelmental function development. The emphasis is put on the functions of social culture andenvironment in promoting cognition development. The sociocultural theory viewsleaner's cognitive development as a socially mediated process that varies from culture toculture. Social relationship and cultural product are recognized as a significant role inhuman，s special thought organizing process. Moreover, it provides with a frame which isnot isolated social environment to study on cognition systematically. Vygotsky (1978)insisted that cognitive growth occurs in a sociocultural context that influences the form ittakes, and many of a child's most noteworthy cognitive skills evolve from socialinteractions with parents, teachers, and other more competent associates.Vygotsky believes that most cognition development occurs externally，then internally.The main hypothesis of Vygotsky's theory claims that the individual internal developmentprocess comes from the interaction with others. That is to say children observe humaninteraction happening in front of them, and they interact with other people and make useof such interactions for individual development. The elements of SCT include socialmediation, regulation，internalization, zone of proximal development (ZPD)，scaffolding，private speech (or inner speech)，activity theory and genetic method, which areinterconnected.

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2.2 Dynamic Assessment

Dynamic assessment, also known as learning potential assessment, is a generaldesignation of a series of assessment formats to explore and develop the learners' capacity,through interaction between evaluators and students，especially under the help fromexperience evaluators in the assessment process (Lidz, 2003). It was proposed by Luria，acolleague of Vygotsky，in 1961, which later advocated by Feuerstein, an Israeli researcher，special education expert and adopted by 汪 lot of researchers afterwards. Researches ofscholars from different countries are numerous and jumbled because it is still in theprimary stage of development and no unified definition of DA is worked out. Severalfamous definition of DA is a man-made word opposite to static assessment, a newpsychological measurement and technique，a dynamic，interactive application system onteaching assessment.Lidz, an American, psychologist，held that DA is an interaction between evaluatorand learners，aiming at assessing learners' potentiality, in order to probe a way tostimulate and maintain the learners，positive change on cognitive competence. The goal ofDA is to measure, intervene, reform and record the learning process.Embretson (1987) considered DA as a measurement for transformation in individualbehavior on different occasions and conditions. Different occasions and conditions arevarious teaching and interventions related to individual cognition level.

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Chapter 3 Research Methodology ......17

3.1 Research Questions...... 17

3.2 Research Subjects...... 19

3.3The Procedure of Research...... 20

3.3.1 Experimental Variables............ 20

3.3.2Experimental Procedures...... 22

3.4 Research Instruments...... 23

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion......   28

4.1 Analysis of the Shift of the Students' Writing Strategies...... 28

4.2Analysis of the Shift of the Students' Writing Motivation...... 34

4.3 Analysis of DA's Impact on Writing Score...... 39

4.4 The EG，feedback to DA mode ......  43

Chapter 5 Conclusion...... 45

5.1 Summary of the Present Research......45

5.2 The Implication of the Research...... 46

5.2.1 Theoretical Implications...... 47

5.2.2Pedagogical Implications...... 47

5.3Limitations of the Present Research...... 48

5.4 Suggestions for Further Researches ......49

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion

In this chapter, the data collected from the practical teaching experiment of DAmodel will be analyzed and discussed. 51 students from Class 7 are chosen as the EG ofthe experiment, taught in the method of DA model，while 51 students from Class 8 as theCG are taught in the traditional way. Five of various transformations taking place in theexperiment are analyzed by the author by using SPSS 13.0 in order to quantize the impactof DA intervention on the students' English writing. First of all，the results and discussionof the shift of the students，perception on English writing are presented. And then the dataof the students' writing strategy and motivation is analyzed and discussed in sequence.Moreover，focus of discussion shifts to the impact of DA model on the students' scores. Atlast，the collected data of the students' feedback on DA model practical teachingexperiment is analyzed and discussed.

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Conclusion

The difficulty of English writing teaching lies in the nature of writing. It is a way tounderstand people's ideas and intentions. A great number of efforts have been made by thescholars, foreign and Chinese，about ESL/EFL writing teaching to improve the students'writing competence. However, there are few empirical researches dealing with the DAmode in middle school English writing. The research has investigated whether the DAmode can exert an impact on the students* writing ability through the experiment, and inwhat way the DA mode influences the students' writing strategies, initiatives andachievement. First of all, the paper offers a literature review of some theories and studiesrelated to writing and DA both at home and abroad. Based on over-viewing the researchesabout the DA mode, a combination of quantitative and qualitative method is employed bythe author, that is, questionnaires and tests (pretest and posttest) to find out the answers tothe research questions. 51 students from senior one in Nanning No.21 Middle Schoolparticipate in the study.

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Reference (omitted)