An Experimental Study Of Jigsaw Method In The Teaching Of Writing In Junior High Schools

Regulations of the State Council on Basic Reform and Development encourages cooperative learning to promote mutual interactions among learners and facilitate teacher-student engagement.Cooperative learning is conducive to the development of linguistics competence and communicative competence through interactions.For English writing instruction,teachers tend to prioritize the final product of writing over the process.Therefore,it results in limited teacher-student interaction and fails to effectively motivate learners or enhance their writing proficiency.As a cooperative learning approach,the Jigsaw method has been put into practice of teaching and gained positive results.Therefore,this thesis applied the Jigsaw method into English teaching in junior high schools and explore its effects on learners’ writing ability,writing self-efficacy and writing strategies,in order to provide a teaching case for English writing teaching in junior high schools on a practical level.Based on the theory of cooperative learning,constructivism and social independence,the research subjects are 80 students from two classes of Grade Eight in a middle school of Y City,X Province.This research adopts the research methods of educational experiment,test and questionnaire to carry out an experimental study for nearly 3 months.The research questions are as follows: Firstly,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ writing ability in junior high school English teaching? This question includes four sub-questions,namely,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ ability of thought and expression,content structure,language use and writing norm in junior high school English teaching?Secondly,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ writing self-efficacy in junior high school English teaching? The sub-questions are,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ writing skill self-efficacy and writing task self-efficacy in junior high school English teaching? Thirdly,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ writing strategies in junior high school English teaching? This question includes six sub-questions,namely,how does the Jigsaw method influence the subjects’ organizational,language,remedial,resourcing,social-affective and dictionary referential strategies in junior high school English teaching?The results of the thesis are: First,the Jigsaw method has a positive influence on learners’ writing ability in junior high school English writing teaching,sharply enhancing subjects’ ability of thought and expression,content structure,language use and writing norm.Second,the Jigsaw method has a positive influence on learners’ writing self-efficacy in junior high English writing teaching,significantly improving the subjects’ writing skill self-efficacy and writing task self-efficacy.Third,the Jigsaw method has a positive influence on learners’ writing strategies in junior high school English writing teaching.The subjects’ organizational strategies,language strategies,and social-affective strategies have been significantly improved,while their remedial,resourcing and dictionary referential strategies have shown no significant influence.Based on the research results above,the implications of this thesis for junior high school English writing teaching are as follows: Firstly,apply the Jigsaw method to guide the junior high school English writing teaching positively and innovate classroom organizational methods.Secondly,create information gaps under the thematic context to enhance learners’ writing ability.Thirdly,improve the design of group activities to boost learners’ writing self-efficacy and writing strategies.