Investigations On College Students' Writing Ability In English And The Implications

The goal of English teaching is to teach students basic English knowledge, offer them an overall skills, improve their practical ability to use English and to learn English correctly. Writing, as the real reflection of learners?aptitude in second or foreign language application, has been a weak area of college students. The teachers of writing are often puzzled about the reasons for lower-teaching outcomes of writing in English. This paper tries to investigate into the factors leading to deficiency of writing by distributing questionnaires to 56 subjects who are English majors in Foreign Languages Department of Guangxi Teachers?College along with interviews conducted among a group of junior English majors and four teachers of the same school. The result of investigation presents that the students?deficiency in English writing is due to personal and instructional elements. The personal elements are: (1) Students are not efficiently exposed to reading materials. Reading furnishes writers with models of language use and sparks ideas for writing. A poor reader can not be a good writer; (2) More than one third of subjects are unwilling to write and their negative attitude interfere with learning to write; (3) Most students are blocked in aspects of generation of ideas, word processing and organization of written discourse. The instructional elements are: (1) The teachers are controllers rather than facilitators in writing course; (2) Monotonous writing tasks assigned to students have frustrated them of their interests and motivation to writing. (3) Inappropriate feedback discourages students of their confidence in writing. Therefore, we assume to suggest that more effective techniques such as Abstract 55 communicative approach, the use of reading materials and the integrating of all language skills be employed in writing teaching. Thus, the involvement of writers, peers and teachers in writing course would better activate students enthusiastic in writing and enable them become more responsible for their own written work. This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction, in which we discuss the background of this investigation and its research methods. Chapter Two studies the original data of The School Report of TEM4 and draws conclusions of college students?writing ability and writing progress on the basis of statistics analysis. It also probes into factors leading to deficiency of students?writing by means of conducting a questionnaire and interviews with junior English majors and teachers. The results of investigation access to implications in effective teaching techniques in Chapter Four. Chapter Three is a theoretical review on product-based research, process-based research and content-based research on writing and the coordinate teaching approaches. Chapter Four discusses the implications of the investigation results to ESL writing teaching. In accordance to the results, effective techniques such as communicative approach, combination of reading and writing as well as integrating of listening, speaking in writing should be employed in the hope of improving students?fluency and quality of writing. Chapter Five is the conclusion. It clearly draws that it is necessary and feasible to adjust teachers?and students?roles in composition course to enhance students?writing...