高中学生英语书面表达两种评价方式的实证研究22

1、An Experimental Study of Nurse Review and Peer Review of Senior Middle School Students English WritingBy Tang YonghuaNo.1 Middle School of Changsha RailwayAbstract: Peer review and nurse review are two approaches towards students English writing. In the study the author did an experiment and proved

2、the hypotheses that PR is more successful than NR in helping students cultivate a spirit of cooperation, to develop initiative in writing and to make improvement in writing. Key words: peer review nurse review experimental studyI. The Background and significance of the StudyEnglish writing ability i

3、s one of the most important abilities that EFL students must obtain. Nowadays, the middle school students in China have some kind of fear of English writing. Writing in English somehow has become a heavy burden for the EFL students. Whereas, in the face of piles of English writing papers, teachers a

4、re all feeling quite perplexed, not knowing what to do with all of these papers. Some teachers spare no pains to review all of the papers, because they wonder whether the students will discover their shortcomings, and whether they can make progress in writing without their teachers detailed review.

5、These teachers try to find all of the errors and mistakes on students papers and to correct them very carefully, although they feel very tired. They think that only in this way can they help the students improve greatly. But, to their disappointment, they often find that what they have made efforts

6、to do has contributed little to the students improvement in writing. Some other teachers have the opposite opinion and they are trying to find out some new ways to solve this problem. Therefore, PR (peer review) has been adopted. Some think it is a good way to save the teachers time and to help the

7、students make more growth in writing. Does it really have an effect? Is PR better in helping improve students writing ability? Anyway, some research must be done on the review of English writing. So, the question of this study is put forward.There are many statements about how to review students wri

8、ting. It can be concluded from these statements that PR can play an important part in the teaching of writing, other than NR(nurse review), and this idea is now widely accepted by many teachers. But most of the statements are primarily from experience or hypotheses drawn from theories. Enough proof

9、for all of these statements cannot be found. Since the experiment talks, it is quite necessary for us to make an experimental study on the comparison of the two approaches towards students writing. So the significance of this thesis lies in its first experimental study on the review of English writi

10、ng.II. The Theoretical Orientation of the Present StudyThe study is based on the following theories.2.1.The Cooperation Learning TheoryCooperative learning is one kind of teaching strategy and theory which plays an active role in improving the class learning atmosphere, raising students scores in la

11、rge areas and developing the students non- cognitive qualities. According to the cooperative learning theory, students who study in pairs, or in groups, and cooperate with each other can be more active and interested in study. And, consequently, an excellent atmosphere for study may be created. 2.2.

12、The Theory of Zone of Proximal Development According to this theory of zone of proximal development by Vygotsky, Adults or peers help plays an important role in childrens development. Teachers help, along with help from students peers who are at nearly the same scholastic level with them, can foster

13、 students growth in study. Teachers and peers were good helpers to the subjects in this study. 2.3 Error AnalysisError analysis points out that language mistakes from learners are very normal, and that learners can learn a language well through the making of mistakes. It describes the procedure of a

14、nalyzing errors, which involves collecting samples of learner language, and identifying the errors in the sample, describing these errors, classifying them according to their hypothetical causes, and evaluating their seriousness. According to this principle of error analysis, teachers should not bec

15、ome panicked, or be too fastidious in correcting the students mistakes, but simply tolerate them. In the teaching of writing, teachers should ask students to make use of their own language system knowledge to monitor and correct their language output themselves. As for the mistakes or errors that st

16、udents make in writing, the teachers should classify them. Some of them may be marked with signals for the students themselves to correct, and some can be pointed out, or corrected, by their peers, which can help them analyze the cause of the mistakes independently, and learn lessons from the mistak

17、es. All of this can be seen in the implementation of treatment in the present study.III. Purpose of the studyThe purpose of the study was to research on the relationship between NR, PR and students writing ability for writing. The author wanted to discover which had a better effect on students writi

18、ng ability, PR or NR and how these two methods affected students writing ability. Thus, we could prove the hypotheses we made before the experiment. At the same time the author wanted to get some experimental data, or rules, or principles from the experiment, to guide the future teaching of writing,

19、 and, at the same time, to enrich the theories discussed previously.IV. SubjectsThe subjects were students from two classes in senior grade II of No.1 Middle School of Changsha Railway. Class 1 was the treatment class. There were fifty-four (54) students in this class, including ten (10) girls. In t

20、his class, PR was the method used in the study.Class 2 was the control class. There were fifty-five (55) students in the class, eleven (11) girls included. NR was performed in this class.V. The hypotheses of the studyThe hypotheses of the study are described, as follows: PR is more successful than N

21、R in helping students cultivate a spirit of cooperation, to develop initiative in writing and to make improvement in writing. VI.The Procedure of the ExperimentThe experiment was conducted from August 26, 2005 to July 18, 2006. All of the 109 students were to finish two (2) writings every week. They

22、 were attending one (1) class period a week in the writing course, and the other writing practice was to be completed outside of class. The practice outside of the class period was a supplement to the practice in class. The subjects in both the treatment and the control classes were receiving the sa

23、me instructions on writing in class. 6.1 A pretestThe first step of the experiment was to take a pretest. The pretest was conducted for the teacher to get a survey of the English level of the subjects before the treatment. For the sake of validity, we chose NMET Hubei 2005 writing material for the p

24、retest. The pretest was conducted on Sep. 8th, 2005. And, all the subjects took the pretest. We got the following graph from the pretest.Graph VI-1From the graph we can see that percentage of the subjects who got A,B,C,D,or E were nearly the same. A conclusion could be drawn that the subjects in Cla

25、ss 1 (the treatment class) and Class 2 (the control class) were almost at the same level of English writing. 6.2 The treatment implementationThis implementation period lasted for ten (10) months, during which time the subjects were required to complete two writing tasks per week. And, in order to re

26、ceive timely response, writing tasks were assigned on Tuesday and Thursday of each week. Sixty-nine (69) writing materials were practiced in both classes during the experiment.6.2.1. Treatment implementation in the control class In the control class, NR was adopted. The procedure of the treatment in

27、 the control class in class could be described, as follows: At the beginning of class, writing papers were handed out, and some students (about ten) who did very well, or made rapid progress in the last writing, were praised. Then, the common mistakes students made in the last writing were pointed o

28、ut, and the model writing was presented. Following this, the new writing material was presented and the instructions for writing were briefly given by the teacher. Then the subjects were asked to complete this writing task within twenty-five (25) minutes. After class, all of the students writings we

29、re collected for the teachers review. 6.2.2. Treatment implementation in the experimental classIn the treatment class, an evaluation sheet was designed, as follows for the peers to carry on their work: REVIEW TABLEWriter _ Peer reader _ Date _Writing _1_Error analysis and correctness评 价 项 目内容要点（完整、较

30、完整、不完整）意思表达（准确，较准确、不准确）篇章结构（理想、较理想、不理想）语言错误（次数）书写（美观、一般、差）评价等第A：21-25；B：16-20；C：11-15D：6-10E：1-5备注 词 汇 句 式 时 态 语 态其他评价结果Table VI6.3.A posttest After the last period in the tenth (10th) month, a posttest was carried out. The pretest was conducted for the teacher to get a survey of the English level o

31、f the subjects after the treatment. NMET Hubei 2006 writing material was chosen for the posttest. We got the following graph:Graph VI-26.4 A post-experiment questionnaireIn order to get a more detailed survey of the students in the two classes, the following questionnaire was designed, and the stude

32、nts in both classes were asked to take this questionnaire, answering the questions truthfully.6.5 Collection and analysis of the data of the experimentThe following graphs are from the pretest and the posttest:The graph from the pretest:Graph VI-1The graph from the posttest:Graph VI-2From Graph VI-1

33、 and Graph VI-2, we can see that most students in Class 1 and Class 2 improved their writing skills in one year. In the pretest, nearly an equal number of students got a grade of A, B, C, D and E. While in the posttest, many more students got a grade of A in Class 1, and so, we can see clearly that,

34、 compared to the students in Class 2, the students in Class 1 improved more over the course of the experiment.6.6. Collection and analysis of the questionnaire responsesThe following is a comparison table of Table IV-6 and Table IV-7.T: the treatment classC: the control classA(%)B(%)C(%)D(%)ItemTCTC

35、TCTC18446111952501026767111111411183605522219119134815113136150215702299214009665821314154707725318195165128544033206157259765415316936Table VI-2The data from questionnaire showed that in Class 1 approximately 84% of the students became active in writing, compared to 46% in Class 2. So we can say th

36、at the initiative in writing of the students in treatment class was greatly developed. Although the data showed that students in Class 1 improved much more in writing than the students in Class 2, the number of students approving PR in Class 1 corresponded with the number of students approving teach

37、er review in Class 2. The percentage of students who would correct their own writing immediately after they received their review from peers was 81% in Class 1 contrasted with 51% in Class 2. 72% of the students in Class 1 said that the review from their peers was acceptable, while in Class 2 only 5

38、3% of the students were willing to accept review from their teacher. At the same time, 76% of the students thought that they had a good relationship with their peers, that is, they cooperated with each other quite well, while only 54% of the students considered that they enjoyed a good relationship

39、with their teachers in the control class.6.7.Major findingsA conclusion can be drawn from the experiment that PR could do better in making students improvement in writing than NR. We have gathered the following findings from the experiment:1.Students can pay much more attention to the review from th

40、eir peers, and they also learn how to justly review and check others writings and in so doing, become good readers. 2.PR allows students to write from the position of readers, and to change their habit of writing from their own position.3. PR can help students realize the importance of readers, and

41、find their mistakes, as well as errors, through discussion with their peers.4.It is more likely for students to accept the review, and to pay more attention to the correctness of their writing in PR.5.Students can have a better idea of the common mistakes they make, and, also, strengthen the recalli

42、ng, understanding and using of their knowledge of language in PR.6.Students in PR can easily find out peers advantages and the shortcomings in themselves, thus striving to make progress.7.The differences in students learning ability, as well as the differences in the relationships between students c

43、an lead to some students careless attitude towards review. And, finally, all of this can lead to inefficient results in PR. 8.Although the errors made by the students in the treatment class were reduced, these same students made little progress in the structure of their writing in PR.9. Students wri

44、ting ability showed a tendency to fall back when their peers were weaker than them.10. Too many mistakes made by the peer readers during their review caused their peers to lose trust in them. 11. Peer readers had some difficulty in dealing with the contents and structure of the passage written by th

45、eir peers.12. NR did better in helping students to write standard and well-structured passages.13. Some top students found that NR helped them to make much improve in writing.ConclusionThe experiment proved the hypotheses made at the beginning. That is, PR can be more successful than NR in helping E

46、FL students at senior middle school in China to cultivate a spirit of cooperation, to develop initiative in writing and to make improvement in writing. It can be found that students in the treatment class became more active to successfully complete writing practice, and they were more willing to rec

47、eive the review from peers. And they also treated the response from their peers in a serious and active manner. At the same time, peer readers became much more careful in reading. In fact, a harmonious relationship was created among the students. The students cared more about others than themselves

48、during writing and reading. They fostered the sense of being a reader and writer in English. In PR, some principles were well reflected. They were disparity principle, brief-instruction principle, modeling principle and process-stressed principle. All of these principles helped the students make pro

49、gress in writing and improve their writing skills. On the other hand, we should also admit that NR did much better in helping students write standard and well-structured passages. Top students can gain more from NR than from PR because of their limitation of knowledge. And, in NR, we can apply the c

50、omprehensive review principle, the encouraging principle and the timely response principle But the author has to say, in this study, the approaches towards writing discussed were limited to NR and PR. And in practice, some other approaches of reviewing, such as self-review and face-to-face review ca

51、n also be used and each one has its advantages. As for this experiment, it was carefully designed, but still some problems existed. First, although the author tried to control all the extraneous variables, some factors such as the students self-writing practice outside of class, and the attitude of

52、the peer reader cannot be completely controlled. Secondly, the number of the subjects was limited thus they may not stand for all the senior middle schools students. Thirdly, the PR carried out outside of the classroom was not in a good writing classroom environment, which somehow affected the validity of the experiment. We compa