A Study Of The Efficacy Of Training Of Language Sense In Improving English Writing Proficiency

A number of researches have been done around college English writing instruction. Some researchers once made the studies from the perspective of language accuracy, proposing the application of the Product Approach in English writing instruction. Meanwhile, some new teaching methods such as"Double Three Teaching Approach"and"Interactive Revision Approach"are also advocated. Some experts made the relevant studies from the perspective of content abundance, advocating the application of Process Approach, Content-based teaching approach and Task-based teaching approach in English writing instruction. Some other experts have made the studies from the perspective of integrating language accuracy and rich content, which is aimed at helping students reach a perfect state in both language accuracy and content in their writings. Thus,"Integrated Approach"which is a method combining the advantages of various teaching approaches and Length Approach have been supported. These efforts were made for achieving one goal---improving students'English writing proficiency.However, a number of literatures and the relevant interviews have found that there are still some inadequacies in students'writings, which are mainly manifested in their weak ability to judge, identify and correct errors. And according to the previous relevant studies, the main reason for students'weak ability to judge, identify and correct errors lies in their weak language sense ability. In view of this, this thesis makes an attempt to put forward some specific teaching ways from the perspective of cultivating language sense, and an empirical study was conducted. The study has proved the effectiveness of the proposed teaching way in promoting writing proficiency.All the 80 subjects in this experiment were the second grade college students of non-English majors from Chongqing College of Education. They were divided into two groups. One was the control group, the other being the experimental group. In the control group, the current teaching ways was adopted, while in the experimental group, the way of teaching around the training of language sense was employed. This experiment lasted four months. In order to examine the changes of students'writing proficiency, a pretest and a posttest about the writing proficiency and error correction have been conducted. Meanwhile, relevant interviews were done before and after the experiment. All the data obtained from this experiment were analyzed with the aid of SPSS.The research results show that the subjects in the experimental group have made significant progress in writing proficiency and language sense ability and the progress in writing proficiency is the direct result of the progress made in language sense, while the progress is not significant for the subjects in the control group. The results from the interviews show that subjects in the experimental group have an obvious positive change of attitudes towards English writing.