Investigation Into EFL Writing Construction Of College English Majors

This thesis presents an empirical study on the writing construction of English majors from the perspective of constructivism. Based on the constructivism learning theory and the characteristics of EFL writing, we design the empirical study to probe into the interactive process between external writing behavior and internal knowledge construction and manage to illustrate a flow-chart of such writing process and propose a descriptive model of writing construction.Constructivism has represented a milestone in modern education and changed the way of teaching and learning as well as the roles of both teacher and learner in classroom. From the angle of learning theory, constructivismhighlights the three eminent shifts: the shift from focusing on the outside input to the generative nature of learning; the shift from individualized learning to socialized learning(cooperative learning); the shift from the decontextualized learning to contextualized learaing.Moreover, constructivist theory regarding the generative nature of learning, understanding, and interpreting as well as composing provides the theoretical rationales for the research of the construction of writing process. Writing process can be regarded as an active process of meaning making and knowledge construction. This process can be quite generative since a writer creates various kinds of links between previously unrelated materials and integrates them into cohesive and coherent text. Through writing about some topics, individuals would become more engaged in their writing and thus achieve more command over the target language.Hinged upon the theories above mentioned, the researcher of this thesis investigated EFL learners' processes of English argumentative writing using multiple data sources including the participants' written texts, videotaped writing behaviors, and retrospective protocols. The results of the empirical study indicate that the skilled EFL students and their unskilled counterparts demonstrate relatively obvious differences in terms of writing fluency and the planning time before starting to write as well as the choice of writing strategies. But as for the quantity of T-units in a written text, no evident differences can be found between the two groups in this empirical study. We further explore the influence of the participants' internal knowledge frameworks on their external writing behaviors through the retrospective method after they have finished their writing. It is concluded that interactionbetween internal knowledge frameworks and external writing construction is the essence of composing process from the perspective of constructivism. Following these results, we illustrate a flow-chart of external writing process and put forward a descriptive model of writing construction.In the meantime, the results of the study suggest that the aim to teach L2 writing is not only to instruct learners how to appropriately produce a written text, but also help students know themselves, tap their potentials to the full, broaden their minds, cultivate their abilities to think critically, and eventually engage actively at the level of written communication. In the practical teaching of EFL writing, the teacher can facilitate learners to establish their writing portfolios which provide documentation of individual writing and learning process, and supply a vehicle for learner-centered assessment.This thesis is organized in 5 parts. In introduction, with the brief analysis of L2 writing process, the author of the thesis addresses five questions which are answered in the empirical study. On the assumption of constructivism learning theory, it is speculated that there is an interactive influence between the external writing behavior and the internal knowledge construction in the process of writing.The first chapter is the literature review related to the theory of EFL writing in applied linguistics and the learning theory of constructivism.The second chapter involves the investigation into EFL writing cognitive construction of college English majors in Sichuan University. In this chapter, the author elaborates the aim, the participants, the methods, procedure, and data processing of this investigation.The third chapter is the results and discussion of the investigation whichcontain the statistical analysis of collected data. Through exploring more deeply into some key correlating factors of EFL writing and probing into the cognitive construction of EFL learners during the process of their writing, in this chapter the author illustrates a flow-chart of writing process and suggests a descriptive model of cognitive writing construction of EFL learners.The last chapter presents the suggestions of EFL writing teaching and learning. The author also mentions the limitations of this empirical investigation and recommends for further feasible research in the field of EFL writing.