An Empirical Study Of Dictogloss In English Writing Teaching Of Higher Vocational Colleges

Writing has been regarded as the main focus of English teaching, which is also one of the important contents of English testing. As a way of transferring information, writing is a kind of language activity or language communication and plays an important part in language proficiency. However, the results of the writing teaching in higher vocational colleges are not as good as expected and many students regard writing as a difficult task. Though many teachers of higher vocational colleges have paid much attention to promoting the students'writing ability, writing is still the weak part of English teaching. In 1960s, communicative teaching method was popular and replaced the traditional way of teaching listening, speaking and writing. Moreover, in 1980s, task-based teaching approach and second language acquisition are popular, which makes dictogloss, as a new way of communicative and task-based teaching approach, popular, too.Writing is such a kind of output process that its main task is to let learners gain the knowledge of the target language and language application competency as much accurate as possible. Dictogloss, as a new way of task-based teaching approach, has aroused much attention from linguists at home and abroad. Dictogloss is a text-based, task-based and learner-centered teaching method, which aims to help students to learn, master and use target language on the basis of learning texts, and at the same time to emphasize the importance of language's meaning and forms. As a kind of group work, dictogloss absorbs the elements of communicative teaching method. And through group discussion and interactively solving problems, dictogloss focuses on both the meaning and the form of the language through comprehensible input. It emphasizes the application of teaching contents, focuses on the importance of output and language fluency and accuracy, which has a great influence on achieving teaching goals and rising students'motivation.The thesis tries to investigate whether the systematic use of dictogloss can promote learners'English proficiency. Firstly, the author begins the study through summarizing the present situation of English writing teaching in higher vocational colleges and the research on dictogloss. After the analyses of questionnaires, interviews, pretest and posttest, the author finds out that there are great differences between the control class and the experimental class in writing mechanics and the mastery of vocabulary. And learners'positivity in the experimental class has greatly improved. Hence, the author expects that English learners and teachers can make full use of some ways like dictogloss to promote English writing teaching and to enhance the efficiency of teaching and learning.