A Study Of The Role Of Prewriting Discussion In English Writing Teaching Of Art Colleges

This paper aims to discuss the impact of prewriting discussion on the Englishwriting of arts students. Prewriting discussion plays a very important role in theprewriting stage. During the process of prewriting discussion, the teacher divides thestudents into small groups and leads them to have a discussion about the background,development and views based on some specific topic. Various ways could be adoptedin the process of discussion, such as brainstorming, free debate, Q&A betweenteachers and students, Q&A among students, etc. The aim is to make the students gaina profound understanding of the subject and quickly complete their writing within theprescribed time. The author hopes that this research can enrich the theory and practiceof English writing teaching for art majors and cause the majority of English teachersto pay enough attention to applying the approach of prewriting discussion to Englishwriting teaching. Through the training of prewriting discussion, the art students arenot only able to get full interest and confidence in English writing, but can beopen-minded and full of imagination in the process of writing, so that they couldcomplete their composition of high-quality with rich content and full structure, whichis the real improvement of their English writing proficiency. Since the1980s, scholarsat home and abroad have begun to focus on the research of prewriting, however, thereare relatively little empirical researches about prewriting discussion and even veryfew people who try to study the role of prewriting discussion in the English writing ofthis special group of art students.In view of the above problems, this paper attempts to study the English writingteaching of art students from the perspective of prewriting discussion. Two researchquestions are presented as follows.1) Is the approach of prewriting discussion moreeffective than the traditional teaching method in improving art students’ Englishwriting proficiency?2) Is the approach of prewriting discussion more effective thanthe traditional teaching method in bettering art students’ attitudes towards Englishwriting in the aspects of their interests in writing, their recognitions and evaluations ofwriting and their intentions about writing in future? The study continued for a semester with a total of eight compositions. The subjects are sophomores fromShandong University of Arts. They are junior college students majoring in arts. Theauthor randomly selects one class as the experimental class and the other class as thecontrol class. The methods of prewriting discussion were adopted in the experimentalclass, while the traditional teaching methods were used in the control class. Testpapers of CET-4, questionnaires and interview are applied as the research instruments.SPSS17.0was used for the comparative analysis of data collected from the test papersand questionnaires of the two classes, which was followed by the qualitative analysisof interviews.The results show that compared with the traditional teaching method, theapproach of prewriting discussion can more improve students’ English writingproficiency. Students’ English scores in the experimental class were significantlyhigher than that of control class. The students in the experimental class made greaterprogress in English writing, specifically embodied in the rich content, faster speed,longer passage, integral structure and logical organization. In addition, compared withthe traditional teaching methods, the approach of prewriting discussion can be moreeffective in bettering the art students’ attitudes towards writing. The students in theexperiment class held more positive attitudes towards writing. They showed greatinterest and self-confidence in English writing and expressed their willingness tocontinue the activities of prewriting discussion in the future writing class.This study provides some pedagogic implications for English writing teachingaccording to the unique characteristics of art students. But confined to some practicalfactors, the study also has certain limitations. Finally, this paper points out theshortcomings of the study, hoping to provide help for future studies in related fields.