How to Improve English Writing Ability in Middle School

1、 如何提高中学生英语写作能力how to improve english writing abilityin middle schoolcontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. literature review.3iii. the students difficulties in writing in middle school.6 1. psychological problems.6 2. linguistic problems7 3. cognitive problems.7iv. principles of teaching

2、and improving the writing.81. principles of teaching writing8 1) the teachers role8 2) the students role.92. tactics on improving the writing.9v. what is a good writing.11vi. conclusion.11references.12how to improve english writing ability in middle schoolhow to improve english writing ability in mi

3、ddle schoolabstract: as china makes developments in science and technology and becomes a member of wto, there is a new demand for chinese students to acquire english ability at this special time. english writing is a valuable communicative skill that should be treated as a focus of language teaching

4、 and research. however, the results of surveys on chinese middle school students of english prompt to explore factors that result in the inefficiency of the teaching of english writing in the chinese classroom. the factors include: misunderstanding of the nature of writing, and of the teachers role;

5、 problems with writing textbooks insufficient english writing research. how to improve the writing ability of middle school students has remained a headache in foreign language teaching and a main concern of foreign language teachers. most of middle school students look on english writing as a heada

6、che and many students are still incompetent in writing in spite of the fact that they have learned english for many years. this paper focuses on a successful application of innovation in teaching middle school students english writing which combines the adoption of process writing approach, the task

7、-based and learner- centered classroom activities, and other methods.keywords: writing process； effective methods； the nature of writing 摘 要：在中国科技发展及加入世界贸易组织这个特殊时期，具备良好的英语使用能力已经成为中国学生的一种新要求。作为一种有效的交际技能，英语写作应该被看成是语言教学和研究的重点。然而，通过对我国中学生的英语写作水平进行的调查，总结出的结果促进我们对造成英语写作教学低效的因素的研究和探讨。这些因素只要包括对写作本质的误解，教师在教学

8、中的角色以及写作教学课本内容不充分。如何提高中学生的英语写作水平已经成为长期让英语老师头疼的问题。对于大多数中学生来说，尽管他们已经学了很多年的英语，但是写作能力差依然是一个让他们头疼的大问题。这篇论文的重点在于如何在中学英语教学中成功的运用以学生为中心的教学活动，教会学生在英语写作中运用分步写作法，达到提高他们写作能力的目的关键词：写作过程； 有效的方法；写作的本质i. introductionteaching english writing to chinese students has long been recognized as one of the most daunting ta

9、sks of middle school education in our country. so often do we hear writing teachers uneasy remarks about the poor quality of student writings, which mainly manifests itself in lack of substance, improper way of textual development and poor grammar. and so often do we hear students grumbling complain

10、s about having nothing to say and not knowing how to say properly. “i have little to say about it,” says one student. “writing is nastily boring, because i really do not know how to write,” grumbles another. such is a troubling scenario prevalent in our country. writing in a second language is not o

11、nly influenced by such factors as topic, definition of audience, and selection of discourse genre, but also influenced by the cultural and linguistic conventions of the writers first language. therefore, the ability to write a fluent, coherent text implies more than the ability to control vocabulary

12、, syntax, and mechanics. the teaching of writing, so to speak, is more than the teaching of writing skills or techniques.writing has everywhere become the vital means for the performance of many various tasks: dealing with the routine work of the office; making a contract between companies; communic

13、ating with friends who are not in the same place; recording something important for our listening and reading. thus only those with a full command of the skills required for these tasks can be confident of being accurate, specific and reasonable in their writing. to our chinese middle school student

14、s, improve writing now is very important for their future. for instance: a secretary in an office must possess the skill of how to write documents concerning the work of this office; a teacher must have the ability to write reasonable teaching plans to guarantee the teaching goes smoothly; a journal

15、ist should have the ability to write articles more truthfully, in a more convincing manner, because he or she is the link between the government and the cities, what she or he has written reflects the government and on the other hand there is feedback from the citizens, for which this link is one of

16、 the most important media between government and people. if this media operates a smoothly as expected, society would be developing in a very positive way. accordingly, improving students writing ability has turned out to be one of the key tasks in middle school english teaching. of the students who

17、 are studying at middle school at present some of those might be the secretaries; the teachers or the journalists in the future.as is characteristic of language, sound is the very first thing any one encounters when beginning to learn to listen when very young. it eventually produces the abilities t

18、o speak, and later forms the base of writing for the time when schooling begins. of the process of obtaining these skills, writing is the most difficult one which strongly determined by the command of speaking, if we have a higher skill of speaking; it would relatively easier to get a higher ability

19、 of writing. we may have a clear memory of our primary school time when we began to learn chinese. reading aloud, reciting, retelling and repeating after the teachers were the everyday tasks we did in the classroom, or at home in the form of homework. we inherited all the above skills predominantly

20、by speaking. with the enhancing of word power and the accumulation of linguistic sense, we began to learn how to write. the writing on this stage is still predominant depended on what we about to say. usually we speak out what we are asked to write down before and during the whole process of writing

21、.when we want to express something, we obey the rules and follow the procedures psychologically by forming the expression in mind for some time first. later finding the suitable words to help organize what we are forming into sentences. usually in this process, speaking is a never-ending-task in fin

22、ishing these procedures. finally we write our formulations down. while writing we never stop uttering in our minds in order to help organize better sentences. this paper mainly focuses on the effective methods to improve english writing ability, and the relations between them. i hope to find new way

23、s of teaching writing by studying and doing research on these influences.some of many influences on writing are:1. the influence on the way of organizing ideas2. the influence on the structure of writing3. the influence on using the proper words 4. the influence on helping to revise the writing afte

24、r finishing itiiliterature reviewwriting is the process of selecting, combining, arranging and developing ideas in effective sentences, paragraphs, and often, longer units of discourse. the process requires the writer to cope with a numbers of varieties:1. methods of development (narrating, explaini

25、ng, describing, reporting and persuading);2. tone (from personal to quite formal);3. form (from a limerick to a formal letter to a long research report);4. purpose (from discovering and expressing personal feelings and values to conducting the impersonal “business” of everyday life);5. possible audi

26、ences (oneself, classmates a teacher, “the world”).writing is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is required to demonstrate control of a number of varieties simultaneously. at the sentences level, these include control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punc

27、tuation, spelling and letter formation. beyond the sentence, the writer must be able to structure and integrate information into coherent paragraphs and texts. this complex process has been studied from different perspectives.since halliday (1985) marked a beginning of a new era when grammar is clos

28、ely related to its function, stating three exclusive categories of meaning expressed by grammar: experiment meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning, researchers and language teachers have endeavored to locate connections between functional grammar and language teaching. in other words, th

29、ey have been exploring ways of applying functional grammar into the field of language teaching. len underworth (1999) analyzed the language characteristics of scientific writing such as science and history texts in the perspective of functional grammar. he spotted the densely packed information clau

30、se structured. the author intends to ease the anxiety of english grammar and reduce the difficulty for readers when they deal with scientific writing. this article is in alignment with the current endeavors to prepare teachers in australia in addressing the interconnections of learning in content ar

31、eas and learning to control the grammatical forms that construct and communicate knowledge in the content areas. john collerson (1995) links features of context (tenor, field and mode) to major functions of language. by using meta-language collerson tries recasting the clause, the essential element

32、of language, into different ways and explains how the different ways can be conveyed in language. the aim of the book is to enhance the instruction of functional grammar by primary school teachers who in turn supply scaffolding in teaching. other researchers give prominence of functional grammar in

33、the field of writing. mary schleppegrell (1988) in her article presents as functional grammatical analysis of a description of 128 seventy - eight students. she perceives the register elements of the works, identifying those relational verbs; expanded noun phrases, verbs tense and thematic choices a

34、re grammatical feature of a description that the students employ unconsciously. she concludes that functional analysis can provide teachers with information about the grammatical resources that enable students to construct more effectively the genres expected in academic contexts. icy lee (2002), on

35、 the other hand, through giving functional grammar instruction and questionnaire and inquiry, probes how the cohesion of the students argumentative and narrative writing has been improved. lee also discovers awareness rising about cohesion in the students writing and their response to the questionna

36、ires. however, there is less concern of the overall performance of writing. as genres of writing are culturally based, genres in different cultures have different characteristics and requirements. traditional grammar, whose preoccupation lies in trivial details (collerson, 1995), cannot help student

37、s to write socially effectively. functional grammar, perceiving grammar in terms of language use, provides scaffolding for teachers to give specific feasible guidance and for the students to generate good writing and realistic evaluation of writing. the product-oriented views consider the writing pr

38、ocess as a linear one which can be determined by the writer before starting to write (hairston 1982). in this orientation, writing is conceptualized as a sequential completion of separate tasks (reid 1982).the focus of the product-oriented views of writing is on a composition made up of series of pa

39、rts-words, sentences, paragraphs-but not on the whole discourse with meaning and ideas (sommers 1982). thus, the teaching of writing is a matter of prescribing a set of predetermined tasks or exercises to the students. the students are engaged in a task of putting words into grammatical sentences. t

40、o a large extent, this is not composing but a “grammar exercise” in a controlled context. this orientation reflects the school tradition which emphasizes the “conscious memorization of grammar rules and the students explicit knowledge of these rules” (jones 1985). language proficiency becomes the pr

41、imary element that determines the skill of composing, while the importance of discovering ideas and creating meaning is overlooked. with such a restricted view of composing, writing teachers are often distracted from responding to student writing, as their time is taken up primarily by identifying a

42、nd correcting mechanical errors. the teachers role in writing becomes limited to that of spotter of grammatical errors and reinforce of a set of grammar rules. however, feedback that is focused on errors does nothing to help students in generating and exploring ideas in writing. this kind of respons

43、e also pays no attention to reader-based discourse, let alone to the fundamental characteristics of the composing process revealed by research on both l1 and l2 writers (e. g. emig 1971, flower and hayes 1981, pianko 1979, zamel 1983). the product-oriented views fit in well with the sentence-level v

44、iew of structuralize linguistics and the bottom-up approach to language processing: before students can be expected to write coherent paragraphs, they should have mastered the language at the level of sentence. writing classes should first of all be devoted to sentence formation and grammar exercise

45、s. classroom activities usually include imitating, copying and transforming models of correct language.process-oriented views arose as a reaction against product-oriented views. process writing has two essential components: awareness and intervention. it helps make students aware that writing is a p

46、rocess, and that there are different processes for different kinds of writing. a major element of process writing is to make students aware that writing is often a process of discovery in which ideas are generated and not just transcribed. faigley, cherry, joliffe, and skinner (1985), for example, h

47、ave developed “process instruments” to help make students aware of their composing process. equally important, as hairson has emphasized, writing process is to make students aware that not all writing is the discovery of ideas; there are situations when writers do “have a carefully planned and fair

48、complete mental modal of what they want to say before they being writing” (parkfurst,1990:172). rhetorical forms, criticized by many process approach authors, are expressions of the discourse communities that “provide, prescribe, and prefer” and can be taught within a process context (swales, 1990:2

49、20-221). even outlining, usually associated with current- traditional theory, may suit some writers style or purpose (reid, 1984).the process-oriented views regard writing as a creative and purposeful activity of reflectingboth in the sense of mirroring and in the sense of deliberating on ones own t

50、houghts (pennington: 1991). the written product, opposite to the product view, is not seen as an end itself. rather, it is the manifestation of a more effective writer in the making. the student is seen both as a learner and as a writer, and the purpose of writing is clear: a written communication w

51、ith the writer himself/herself, with his/her fellow learners, with his/her teacher, and with his/her intended readers (stewart, 1988). iii. the students difficulties in writing in middle schoolaccording to the survey to the middle school students, there are many problems when they are wringing, the

52、following are the main aspects:1. psychological problems speech is the natural and normal medium of communication in most circumstances and accustoms students both to having someone physical present when they use language and to feedback of some kind. writing, on the other hand, is essentially a sol

53、itary activity and the fact that the students are required to write on their own, without the possibility of interaction or the benefit of feedback is in itself making the act of writing difficulty:1) in the middle school, when the teacher asks students to write something, the students just to write

54、 and do not think about other aspects. they think the writing is just writing, it has nothing to the reading.2) most of middle school students look on english writing as a headache and many students are still incompetent in writing in spite of the fact that they have learned english for many years.

55、the students do not know how to begin, how to choose the right words, sentences, style and end the writing.2. linguistic problemsbecause speech is normally spontaneous; the middle school students have little time to pay attention either to organizing their sentence structure or to connecting their s

56、entences. incomplete and even ungrammatical utterances will pass unnoticed. in writing, the students have to compensate for the absence of these features: they have to keep the channel of communication open through their own efforts and to ensure, both through their choice of sentence structure and

57、by the way their sentences are linked together and sequenced, that the texts they produce can be interpreted on their own.3. cognitive problemsmiddle school students grow up learning to speak and in normal circumstances spend much of their time doing it. they also appear to speak without much effort

58、 or thought and generally they talk because they want to, about matters which are of interest or relevant to us socially or professionally. writing, on the other hand, is learnt through a process of instruction. the students have to master the written form of the language and to learn certain structures which are less used in speech, or perhaps not used at all, but which are