The Application Of Computer-assisted Instruction(CAI) To The Teaching Of English Writing In High Schools

Along with the advancement of globalization, every country, including China, has to establish communications with other countries. In the process of communication, one of the most important things is to understand each other. English, as an international language, has been widely used as a medium of communication. Using English means not only reading English materials and listening to radio programs in English, but also giving information in English. Speaking and writing abilities are thus very important on various occasions. Besides, the Ordinary Senior High School English Curriculum Criteria newly promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 2002 made still greater demands on the teaching of writing at Chinese high schools. In addition, the test for written expression constitutes an important portion of the NMET (National Matriculation English Test), and furthermore, the evaluation criteria for writing in NMET are becoming increasingly strict. All these indicate the undisputable importance of writing in English teaching and inevitably have a great impact on the activities and methodology of writing teaching in Chinese senior high schools. However, we must admit that we are rich maybe in teaching experience of reading but poor in that of writing. Many serious problems still exist in the current teaching of English writing in high schools, which is seriously impeding the improvement of students' writing competence. This is because many English teachers do not understand the nature of the teaching of English writing and seldom examine or adjust their teaching approaches and strategies. That's why students' writing skills haven't got obvious improvement. Therefore how to improve students writing skills in the limited time has become the major concern of every teacher and the situation has brought us teachers of English face to face with the question: what is the ideal way of teaching students to write? In response to the question, this thesis tries to show how to apply CAI (Computer-assisted Instruction) to problem solving in a writing class so as to improve students'writing proficiency effectively.Based on such theories as Krashen's hypotheses, constructivist theory, motivation theory and theories about writing as a process, this research was undertaken by means of a two-semester experiment of writing teaching on two classes of 40 students each, one taught in the traditional way and the other by using CAI. The two classes were taught by the same instructor and used the same teaching materials. After a succession of pre-test, post-test, a questionnaire, classroom behavior observation and an informal interview, information and statistics were gathered for a comparative study and thereby implications for writing teaching were drawn.The thesis gives a detailed account of the research, which is a qualitative one supplemented with quantitative data. It consists of 5 chapters. Chapter One justifies the research topic. Chapter Two conducts a literature review, which lays down the theoretical ground for the thesis. Chapter Three elaborates on the experiment and investigation procedures. Chapter Four presents the investigation results followed by analyses. Chapter Five draws a conclusion of the whole thesis and offers suggestions for future research after pointing out the limitations of the current research.