The Trial Of The Four-Stage Writing Model In Teaching English Writing At Senior High School

It is a well-accepted fact that English is widely used in the international communication. Listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities are all needed while the communication is in process. Writing has also been regarded as a significant skill to be developed for high school students. Detailed demands for writing are presented in the New English Curriculum (2003) and requirements for good writing are also described clearly in five bands in the NMET (2005). But in the ELT classrooms at high schools, especially in traditional pedagogy, teachers pay little attention to teaching writing. Of all the four skills, writing is the most difficult to develop, esp. for the high school students. The students regard writing as a headache and make it the last thing to be practiced. In their opinion, they can't make much progress in writing even if they are asked to write once or twice a week, and writing a composition will cost them too much time. Therefore, in order to improve the students' writing ability, the present researcher designed the Four-Stage Writing model based on process and product writing theory study as well as research on teaching practice.This writing model is made up of 4 stages. Stage 1: Brainstorming: generating as many words, phrases and ideas as they can relating to the topic. Stage 2: Sentences making: using words or phrases produced during the first stage. Stage 3: Sentences combining: Using transitional words or phrases to combine sentences made in the second stage if necessary. Stage 4: Drafting and writing down the final version.The hypotheses of the action research are:1. The Four-Stage Writing model may help students develop positive attitudes...