Chinese Prompts And Its Effects On English Writing Ability

In nature, writing is an integrative process of using comprehensive skills, making it hard for learners to master in a short period. As a result, after having learned English for a long time, a considerable number of English students are not able to produce an integral and coherent writing product. Therefore, English writing is recognized as a hard nut by English teachers and has become one of their main concerns, leading to many studies in this field. But most of the studies don't take prompts into consideration, nor treat writing as a natural process of self-discovery and self-expression. Besides, most of the studies were carried out in colleges or universities instead of in senior high schools. In an attempt to make some improvements in teaching English writing in senior high school, the researcher devised the present study.This study explored the effects of the Chinese prompts on students'writing ability in senior high school. Eighty two subjects participated in the study, which lasted one term, forty one in the experimental class, and forty one in the control class. According to the results of the pretest, the writing abilities of the two classes were equivalent and comparable at the beginning of the study. In the course of the study, the students in the control class were taught with the translation approach (writing with detailed Chinese prompts), while the students in the experimental class were taught with the free writing approach (writing without detailed Chinese prompts but with a title only). At the end of the study, both classes were given two post-tests at the same time in the same place, whose results indicated that when writing without detailed Chinese prompts, the experimental class enjoyed an evident advantage over the control class. When writing according to detailed Chinese prompts, the advantage of the experimental class was not that significant, but difference did exist. The conclusion that can be drawn from the study is that the free writing approach helps to promote the students'writing ability in the aspects of content selection, information collection, organization and language use as well. Besides, comparing the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire, the author found that students in the experimental class showed greater interest in English writing after the experiment than those in the control class. They are less anxious or afraid of English writing and writing is no longer a suffering for them but a process of creation and self-expression. Now more confidence in English writing can be identified in them and most students are capable of producing a complete, well-organized passage in English. That is to say, the free writing approach outperforms the translation approach in cultivating students'interest and positive attitudes to writings.At the end of this thesis, to be realistic, the author puts forward some suggestions which may be of some use to the writing teachers when they carry out English writing teaching in their classes.