English Writing Teaching In Senior Middle School Under The Guidance Of The Theory Of Discourse Pattern

Discourse pattern is the underlying ways of organization of a context. For an English learner, it will be difficult to write a well-structured essay if he doesn't have a good knowledge of discourse, even with a good command of vocabulary and grammar. However, most of current English writing teaching methods focus on words, phrases sentences and grammar, which result in students' poor writing ability. In this case, the writer of the paper analyzes the effects of discourse pattern theory on the English writing teaching in senior high school and gives the model of writing teaching based on discourse analysis to improve students' writing capacity.Firstly, the theory of discourse pattern relevant to English writing in senior high school is briefly introduced, such as the concept of discourse and discourse analysis. Five common discourse patterns in English are question-answer pattern, general-particular pattern, claim-response pattern, problem-solution pattern and opportunity-taking pattern. But it is the application of discourse pattern theory to English writing in senior high school that we put our focus on. We suggest that the discourse pattern be classified into two levels:â‘ the entire organization of an essay;â‘¡grammatical device, lexical cohesion and logical connection ,consisting of a paragraph in an essay. Some of the samples in this part are chosen from Senior English for China (book3)and the students' essays.Secondly, the writer analyzes the situation of English writing teaching in senior high schools. We have found that apart from some errors in words and grammar, there exist many problems in discourse pattern, cohesion and coherence due to inappropriate teaching methods, difference in thinking between the Chinese and westerners. Considering this situation, the writer suggests that discourse theory be used in senior high school in china.With a combination of the theory of discourse analysis with the practice of English teaching in senior high school in china, we give some of the teaching samples in three levels:â‘ cohesion and coherence between sentences,â‘¡the development of a paragraph,â‘¢appropriate discourse patterns of certain essays. During the teaching, a practical strategy is introduced: improve the students' writing ability by reading based on discourse analysis.In order to prove whether discourse pattern theory can help to improve students' competence to write, the writer conducts an experiment in two classes of Grade Three in Sheqi Number1 Senior High School. During the experiment, which lasts four months, one is the experimental class and students in this class are taught cohesion and coherence and discourse patterns based on discourse analysis, the other is the controlled class and students in this class are taught in the traditional way. Each week both classes have one period of writing lesson. And from the data analysis of the experiment, the writer gets some findings. For instance, the average final score, cohesion, coherence score and discourse score of the experimental class is much higher than that of the controlled class. The results show that discourse pattern writing teaching have great effect on improving students' writing competence. Hence, the writer puts forward two suggestions.â‘ to stress the difference between Chinese discourse pattern and English discourse pattern and apply discourse pattern theory to the writing teaching in senior high school;â‘¡to improve students' writing competence by reading based on discourse analysis.