Application Of Differentiated Instruction In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

As one of the four basic skills of English,writing is an important way to communicate with others and to consolidate the linguistic knowledge one has already learned.Students’ writing ability can mirror their comprehensive English proficiency to a large extent.However,due to the pressure of examinations in China,teachers often put more emphasis on input skills rather than output skills,especially writing,which has led to the unsatisfactory situation of writing teaching.In addition,under the current situation of large class size teaching,students’ special needs and personalized development can not be met accordingly.Therefore,it is urgent to apply an effective approach to improve students’ writing competenceAccording to Carol Ann Tomlinson’s definition,differentiated instruction means that teachers scientifically divide students into several levels according to the factors such as students’ existing knowledge,ability level and potential tendency,and carry out different teaching according to students’ levels.These different groups get the best development and improvement with proper stratification strategy and interaction with teachers.The author of this paper attempts to apply differentiated instruction in English writing class in Guang Ming High School in Dongguan City,so as to explore the effectiveness and feasibility of differentiated instruction in improving students’writing interest,attitude,motivation and writing proficiency.This paper explores the implementation of differentiated instruction in English writing class in Senior One with the theory of the zone of proximal development,multiple intelligences and constructivism as its theoretical framework.The experiment started in early March and ended at the end of June in 2018.The author selected 106 students from two classes in the first grade of Guang Ming High School.Among them,52 were in the controlled class while 54 were in the experimental class.54 questionnaires were handed out to the students in the experimental class by the author.Through the analysis of the questionnaires,the author found that there are some problems in students’ interest,attitude and motivation in writing.It is manifested in students’ low interest in English writing,lack of concentration,low participation in the classroom,negative attitude towards the current teaching mode of writing,and weak motivation for writing.At the same time,the author conducted a pre-test in the two classes,and the results showed that no significant difference was found between these two classes.They are paralleled classes.The controlled class adopted the current teaching method,while the experimental class adopted differentiated instruction.After the experiment,another questionnaire survey was conducted in the experimental class,and post-test was carried out in the two classes.The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by using SPSS 20.0.Through describing and analyzing the data of the questionnaires,it is found that differentiated instruction had a positive effect on improving students’ interest,attitude and motivation in English writing.Specifically,differentiated instruction stimulates students’ interest in writing.It makes them focus on writing learning and actively participate in the writing classroom.And students hold a positive attitude towards differentiated instruction.At the same time,students’ writing motivation has been strengthened.By describing and analyzing the data of the pre-test and post-test,it is found that students’ writing proficiency has been effectively improved.This proves the validity and feasibility of the application of differentiated instruction to the teaching of English writing in Senior One.This paper further studies the influence of differentiated instruction on students at different levels.The results show that differentiated instruction has a significant effect on students of three different levels.Among them,the most significant impact is on the students of level B.However,there are still some shortcomings and limitations in this study.The author puts forward some suggestions for future researches.Further exploration and improvement are expected in the future.