Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The Importance of English Writing
English has been popularized for many years in China, and a large number of peoplehave recognized the importance of English learning. The development of culture, science andtechnology, economy and some other aspects could not go without English knowledge in sucha globalized society. There is a great demand of English in some southern coastal cities likeGuangzhou because of frequent external trades. Last month the author was lucky enough toencounter Shenzhen and experienced its internationalization. Station announcements andtraffic signs made her nervous and embarrassed. In order to cater to the development of thetimes, many countries include China pay their attention to practical abilities in Englishteaching. While in English using, writing is the most important part for English writingrequires solid English foundation and powerful language input and output ability. In a word,changing times need high-level English education and then it requires students to improvetheir writing ability. One who gives an excellent composition must be an English talentbecause he has mastered English skills proficiently. Harmer (2000) once said writing is abasic language skill; it should be learned so that the learners can communicate with otherpeople in a relatively wide range.The formal English education ranks writing after listening, speaking and reading whichimplies the importance and difficulty of writing. English writing mirrors students’ Englishlevel and ability, or we can say, people can see the range, depth, and accuracy of one’sknowledge from his writing. So how to enhance one’s writing is a vital task in teaching andlearning process. Writing is an indispensable part in any language course.
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1.2 Present situation of English Writing
English has been taken seriously for a long time but the condition is not so well aspeople have wished. In another word, education department, teachers and students haveendeavored a lot, yet not effective.Throughout the past decades it is indisputable that our education department haveattempted many times to perfect English teaching. Full-time compulsory education ofordinary senior middle school English curriculum standard (experiment draft) said that theoverall curricular objective of the primary education stage is to train students’ comprehensivelanguage application ability. It also indicated that the comprehensive language applicationability should base on students’ language skill, language knowledge, emotional attitude,learning strategy and cultural awareness.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Writing and English writing
People showed their interests in writing from 1960s. In the early 1980s, some scholarsturned to study writing process seriously. Decade’s studies have been proved quite useful foreffective writing, especially for Chinese middle school students. They are not familiar withEnglish, which may influence their thoughts and writing level. It seems that writing is adifficult task for Chinese students and they could do nothing about it. While Zamel(1985) saidthat writing strategy in mother tongue can be used in second language. English teachersshould emphasize on reasonable guidance not on their errors or mistakes."Writing is a medium of communication that represents language through the inscriptionof signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spokenlanguage. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech,such as vocabulary, grammar and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signsor symbols, usually in the form of a formal alphabet(OL,Wikipedia). English writing is an art.It explores how to communicate with written words and expresses a kind of thought. It is theadvanced stage of English language learning as well as the stage of language output . (赵云，2000).
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2.2 Writing Difficulty and its Classification
Students meet a variety of difficulties in English writing which make them dislikewriting. They write under the pressure of examination. Writing begins with planning and endswith reviewing. Learners often say there is a huge difference between what they write downand what they intend to write previously (qtd in Sasaki, 2000:266). The problem at present isto sum these difficulties up and solve them specifically.There are three major difficulties---the psychological problem, the linguistic problem andthe cognitive problem that make writing difficult a lot.The psychological problem means that the composition is accomplished by studentsthemselves without others’ help. The writer may discuss the topic with other people but he hasto write it with his own thought and mind. Everyone owns his unique sentence structure andmode of presentation.The linguistic problem refers that the author must handle some linguistic knowledge. Theknowledge covers all what students have got from primary schools like grammar, vocabulary,structure, figures of speech and so on. According to Raimes the writing difficulties forESL(English as a second language) Students are largely the result of difficulties withcomposing skills than with linguistic skills(qtd in Grabe & Kaplan, 1996:141). Students haveto deal with linguistic difficulties through some given strategies. After all, English writing isquite different from a Chinese composition. A Chinese writing hardly troubles the writer ongrammar or structure.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Background ......... 19
3.1 Constructivism ..... 19
3.2 Output Hypothesis...... 21
Chapter Four Research Design ...... 25
4.1 Objectives....... 25
4.2 Research Questions .... 25
4.3 Subjects .... 26
4.4 Research Instruments ....... 27
4.4.1 Questionnaires for Students..... 27
4.4.2 Questionnaires for Teachers .... 30
4.4.3 Interviews for Some Teachers and Students.... 30
4.5 Procedures ...... 30
4.5.1 Training in Experimental Class ..... 31
4.5.2 Test for Both Classes......... 36
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ........ 39
5.1 Results of Writing Difficulties ..... 39
5.2 Results of Writing Strategies........ 39
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Results of Writing Difficulties
We know the most confused part in writing is grammar and vocabulary. And the tableproved our opinion. Students have mastered large number of vocabulary, while in writing theyare not confident. How to choose a concrete word is a little hard. Grammar errors areembodied in many aspects like sentence, words, content. Grammar rules are not enough whenpeople write something down. The more errors, the lower scores students will get. In this table people can see clearly that students’ writing almost involved all thestrategies. The most popular strategy is discuss with other students before writing(mean=4.141). This is reflected in the 5thquestion in the questionnaire. Item 4 “List usefulwords, phrases and sentences”, item 12“Pay attention to composition coherence” and item 22“Recite good paragraphs” also get high support. The most unfamiliar strategy, or the leaststudents choose in their writing is item 25 “Keep a diary or write short passage often” which showsstudents are lazy to exercise by themselves.
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Conclusion
Based on the research and analysis of the data, we have answered the questions inchapter four. And at the last part we can make some conclusions.The first research question in chapter four is “what the major problems in students’writing are”. In the former part, the author investigates high school students’ problems in theirEnglish writing. Questionnaires and interviews are used and the author finally summarizesthem into three major difficulties---the psychological problem, the linguistic problem and thecognitive problem. So in the teaching process, the teacher should try to understand studentsrather than complain about their poor ability. If teachers help them from these aspects,students must be very grateful.For the second question: Do students know how to use writing strategies, the authorintroduces another concept in the later part ---writing strategy. Every problem has its solution,and writing difficulty is not an exception. This strategy helps learners solve their problems inwriting. Different people have different opinions about what is writing strategy and how toclassify them. The author mainly analyzes this paper according to Liu Zhiqun’s views. In thisstudy, one or two theoretical basis are inevitable. The author mainly uses the constructivismlearning theory and output hypothesis because they are the most proper theories that canexplain the study. After the analysis, the teacher concludes that, students can use thesestrategies unintentionally. They knew little about the writing strategy. If students know thespecific functions of each strategy, they may use them more appropriate.
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Reference (omitted)