An Action Research On Plot Construction Of Continuation Writing

As one of the output skills,English writing has become an important indicator to measure English learners’ comprehensive ability to use language,especially in senior high school English teaching.After Wang Chuming,a Chinese scholar,put forward the writing method of combining reading and writing,which is called “continuation writing(CW)”,more and more studies have confirmed that it is an effective way to promote English learning,and it has also become a new type of test item in National Matriculation Entrance Test(NMET).However,in the existing researches on CW,most of the earlier ones focused on college students as studying subjects.Although some later researches took the students in senior high schools as the studying subjects,there are few empirical ones,and only a small part of them focused on a specific part such as plot,language,content,etc.of CW.In the English teaching at the stage of senior high school,due to the lack of teaching experience and theoretical guidance on this new type of test item,front-line teachers and students face many problems in CW training,among which the most obvious one is that teachers pay few attention to the teaching of the plot construction of the continuation writing(PCCW),and students’ plot construction is unnatural,unreasonable and not vivid which led to their poor performance and low level in CW.Therefore,taking action research as the main methodology,this thesis applies Labov’s Narrative Analysis Pattern(LNAP)to the teaching of PCCW in senior high school in such way as to solve three problems: First,combined with the practical teaching of English writing,to explore the effective teaching method which applies LNAP to PCCW in senior high school;Second,to explore whether this teaching method can improve senior high school students’ ability in PCCW;Third,to explore whether this teaching method can improve senior high school students’ level of CW.In order to solve the above three problems,this thesis adopts the research tools such as students’ test grades and test texts of CW,questionnaires,interviews,teaching logs,and group assessment,and takes the example of 56 students in Grade 2 in the internship class to implement two rounds of action research within three months.Through the first round of action research,the results show that: firstly,the teaching of PCCW based on LNAP can help students to read and analyze the text of the given original text in a structured way,and improve their ability at the level of discourse analysis;Secondly,the teaching of PCCW based on LNAP can improve the students’ ability of PCCW,and make the connection between the plots of the continuation part and the original text more cohesive;Thirdly,the teaching of PCCW based on LNAP can improve the students’ level of CW and improve their performance on it.Through the second round of action research,the results show that:firstly,reading the text materials in groups gives full play to the dominant position of students,strengthens the interaction between students,and greatly improves the enthusiasm and initiative of students to sort out the original text.As a guide,the teacher timely corrects students’ deficiencies and grasps the rhythm of sorting out the original text in class,which can make the reading of the original text more efficient;Secondly,in the process of reading text,students are encouraged to draw out the core vocabulary and phrases as well as high-quality expressions,sort out the narrative parts of LNAP and draw a mind map.So that they can better understand the main points of the original text and establish discourse awareness;Thirdly,on the basis of using LNAP,the students add detailed description.While constructing the framework of the continuation plot,they also describe the main characters in the text with action,psychology,environment and appearance descriptions to fully express the characters,making the continuation plot constructed full of vivid details.Through the analysis of all the collected data,this thesis found that:The effective teaching method of PCCW based on LNAP is as follows:The first step is to train the students about LNAP,so that they can be familiar with it and the function of each narrative part,then prepare for the teaching of PCCW;The second step is to divide students into groups according to their seats or English proficiency,and carry out learning activities in groups supplemented by teachers’ guidance;The third step is to read the original text,including drawing out the sentence patterns of important phrases and sorting out the narrative parts in LNAP.Students are required to copy and accumulate the sentence patterns of important phrases and present the narrative parts in the form of mind maps,including the abstract,orientation(time,place,characters and background),evaluation and complicating action.Teachers and all students should evaluate together to lay the foundation for PCCW;The fourth step is to guide students to find the core contradiction / contrast /difficulty that has appeared in the original plot,and discuss how to solve this core contradiction / contrast / difficulty;The fifth step is to read the two given sentences in the continuation part,reverse the plot,determine the way to solve the core contradiction / contrast / difficulties,and add the appreciation of detailed descriptions on the characters according to the development of the plot;The sixth step is to determine the resolution and the coda of the story according to the two given sentences in the continuation part,the evaluation and the way to solve the core contradiction/contrast/difficulty;The seventh step is to ask students to rewrite what they have learned after class and submit it to teachers for evaluation.This way can not only make the plot construction of the students’ CW more natural and reasonable,but also increase the frequency of detailed descriptions,and can improve the students’ CW level and performance.Although the teaching method of plot construction based on LNAP can effectively solve the problems of PCCW in a certain extent,promote the development of efficient classroom and the implementation of quality education,there are some problems in the process of action research.For example,the research samples are limited so that they are representative but not too universal;The research time is relatively limited,which may affect the persuasiveness of the research results;The class duration is not too long,which may affect the output effect of students.These limitations will be further discussed in the future related researches.