Journal of East China Normal University(Educational Sciences) ›› 2022, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (9): 90-104.doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2022.09.009

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Could Intelligent Essay Feedback Improve the Effect of Writing Teaching in Middle School?

Shujun Liu1, Yan Li2, Yuewei He3, Jingjing Wang3   

  1. 1. College of Humanities, Huzhou Normal University, Huzhou Zhejiang 313000, China
    2. College of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
    3. Hangzhou Baochuta Shenhua Experimental School, Hangzhou 310058, China
  • Accepted:2022-05-30 Online:2022-09-01 Published:2022-08-24

Abstract:

The development of Chinese Intelligent Essay Evaluation System is expected to change the practice and research of traditional writing teaching. However, the way of its integration into daily writing teaching and its teaching effect are highly concerned by Chinese teachers and writing teaching researchers. This study took 28 middle school students who participated in the writing extension course in B school as samples, and carried out a 10-week quasi-experimental study with the method of pre- and post-test in a single group, to verify the effect of integrating Intelligent Essay Feedback into writing teaching in middle school from multiple dimensions. Students took part in three writing activities after receiving argumentative writing guidance. Each time, they needed to conduct intelligent evaluation of the first draft and then revised the essay according to the intelligent feedback. The research focuses on analyzing the characteristics of writing revision and the improvement of writing quality, exploring the development of students’ writing motivation and revision belief, and investigating students’ perception of Intelligent Essay Feedback. The findings are as follows. Firstly, the most commonly used revision behaviors of students were adding and replacing, followed by deleting and rearrange; the ratio of lower order revision was higher than that of higher order revision; students attached great importance to self-directed revision, the success rate of which was lower than that based on intelligent feedback. Secondly, students’ writing performance improved significantly, the length of essays increased significantly, and students made significant progress in the use of stylistic elements such as arguments, explanations and conclusions. Thirdly, students’ writing motivation significantly improved in the dimensions of persistence and passion, and their writing revision belief significantly improved in the lower and higher order dimensions. Fourthly, most students believe that Intelligent Essay Feedback can promote writing practice, and the quality of feedback is the key factor affecting students’ perception. Therefore, Intelligent Essay Feedback can effectively support students’ writing revision process and improve the quality of writing revision. The continuous exploration of multiple integration paths of Intelligent Essay Feedback, teacher feedback, peer feedback and curriculum structure would be beneficial to the promotion of human-computer collaborative writing teaching practice.

Key words: Intelligent Essay Feedback, writing teaching, writing performance, writing motivation, writing revision belief