An Empirical Study On The Development Of College Students’ Writing Competence Under The Internet Environment

Among the four basic English skills(listening,speaking,reading and writing),writing is regarded as the most difficult skill to be improved.A lot of attention has been paid to the development of English writing competence in every period of English teaching and learning though,compared with the development of listening,speaking and reading skills,writing abilities have not achieved the corresponding improvement.Of all the elements contributing to the development of students’ writing competence,writing practice could be a crucial factor to some extent.Traditional English writing practice has been limited in the classroom which can not meet students’ requirements.The author believes English writing practice should make the best use of the Internet and integrate the training environment into daily life.Before the actual writing,students can receive material input and search for information related to the writing topic through the Internet.This process of preparation,which in effect is a process of self-study,meets the requirements of autonomous learning.This paper attempts to explore the impact of material input on writing competence of non-English majors.In the thesis,the author puts forward three research questions.1)Can the related material input through QQ group change the students’ attitudes towards English writing?2)Can the related material input through QQ group enhance the writing competence of non-English majors?3)If the related material input through QQ group can improve students5 writing performances,in what aspects can students make progress(content,organization,vocabulary,language use,mechanics)?The author launches a 10-week research to observe the writing performances of 60 freshmen of non-English majors in Guangxi University.Firstly,the subjects were invited to two QQ groups,to which pre-test and survey questionnaire were given by the author.During the experiment,the author assigned the same six writing tasks to both the experimental group and the control group.In the experimental group,material input was emphasized.Relative information related to the writing topic were provided to the students together with each writing task.Students in the group were also encouraged to search for relative information before they tackled their writing tasks.In the control group,students received writing tasks without teacher’s guidance.Students in both groups got feedback and suggestions from teachers after they submitted their writing online.At the end of the experiment,the author posted survey questionnaire and conducted post-test and post-interview to both of the two groups.Based on the statistics obtained by use of SPSS and EXCEL,the author comes to the following conclusions:1)The related material input through QQ group can change students’ attitudes towards English writing.2)The related material input through QQ group can enhance students’ writing competence.3)Students’ writings improve significantly in terms of content,organization and vocabulary,however,there is no significant change in language use and mechanics.