A Study Of English Letter Communication Method In English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

At the present time in China, the focus of the senior high schools’English teaching always falls on vocabulary, grammars and exercises explanation, while writing practice is much neglected. However, as one of the four basic language skills, English writing does have an important role to play in improving students’English proficiency and is also a good form of testing students’ comprehensive application of the English knowledge. It makes great demands of the students, so in daily English teaching teachers should pay more attention to training students’writing skills and improving their writing proficiency. However, in reality, we can find that many senior high school students in our country don’t do well in English writing. Problems in their compositions can range from the punctuation, capitalization, word spelling to the application of the sentences, the overall structural arrangement and also the expression of thoughts. What is worse, many students are not aware of the importance of English writing, or even have no interest or confidence in writing English well at all.With this starting point, the author takes the Output Hypothesis (Swain,1985) and the Interaction Hypothesis (Long,1996) in the second language acquisition field as the theoretical basis and puts forward the teacher-student English letter communication method, attempting to inspire students to do more English writing practice in this way. In the process of this teaching experiment, the author mainly focuses on the following three questions:1. Can the English letter communication method improve students’ English writing proficiency?2. Is the English letter communication method helpful in changing students’ attitudes towards English writing?3. What attitude do the students have towards the English letter communication method?A total of112students from two classes (class21, class22) in the Xixian No.1Senior High School of Henan Province took part in the English writing teaching experiment from September,2011to January,2012, which lasted for about4months. Class21was the experimental class with a total of55students, adopting the teacher-student English letter communication method as the common English writing practice form; Class22was the controlled class with a total of57students and was still trained by the traditional English writing teaching method, namely the ordinary composition training. Before and after the experiment, the author respectively held two English writing tests in the two classes, and conducted two questionnaires in the experimental class separately. Both the test and questionnaire results were processed through the computer and analyzed by SPSS19.0software afterwards. In order to have a more comprehensive and intuitive understanding of the students’ attitudes to the English letter communication method as well as their psychological changes before and after the experiment, especially the changes of their attitude towards English writing, the author also did an interview among10students (5boys,5girls) randomly chosen from the experimental class at the end of the experiment, and then conducted a summary analysis of students’ answers.We can come to a conclusion from the final results of the study.Firstly, the English letter communication method can improve the students’writing proficiency. The deep-seated reason lies in that the form of correspondence can motivate students to write and practice English more willingly and spontaneously. Based upon this, the English letter communication method is more effective than the traditional teaching method in enhancing students’writing proficiency.Secondly, the English letter communication method is helpful in changing the students’attitudes towards writing. On the one hand, they can feel love and care from teachers’reply, so writing becomes a pleasure rather than a task for them. On the other hand, constant writing practice enables them to make greater progress, which in return endows them with a strong sense of achievement as well as confidence and interest.Thirdly, according to students’ answers to the questionnaires and interview, we can find that most of them hold a positive attitude towards this method. They are willing to have a conversation with their teacher by writing English letters especially when facing difficulties and problems because they can be comforted and get help in this way. More importantly, they witness their own improvement in English writing during the process, so in return, they had firmer belief in this method.And through the research we should also bear it in mind that no matter which method of English writing teaching is adopted, continuous input and output is necessary and essential. At the same time, teachers should spend more time in guiding students to apply what they have learnt to their writing and showing more concern for students’ mentality. All of these will contribute a lot to English writing teaching.