Developing The Sense Of Contrast Between English And Chinese In Senior High School English Writing Teaching

Based on some theoretical researches on contrastive analysis and language transfer, this thesis mainly explores why and how to improve students' writing ability by developing their contrastive consciousness between Chinese and English.First, by questionnairing the students in Grade One of the Middle School Affiliated to Wuhan University, the author finds out that lack of contrastive consciousness is one of the most important factors that effect students' ability in writing. Then, an analysis of students' errors is made following the procedures of identifying errors, describing errors, clarifying errors, explaining and evaluating errors. The investigation suggests that where students lack contrastive consciousness are mainly sentence structures and vocabulary.According to the investigation and analysis of the errors, an experiment was carried out on how to develop students' contrastive consciousness of sentence structures in Class Three, Grade One of the Middle School Affiliated to Wuhan University, which was the experimental class. Based on the theory of contrastive analysis, an elaborately planned training of English writing was conducted in Class 3. The text grammar teaching was practically combined with teaching writing skills. During the experiment, the teacher guided the students to summarize the similarities and differences between English and Chinese, to do some drills and apply what had been learned to writing exercise, while a common routine of teaching was carried out in Class 2 which was taken as the contractive class. After a five-month experiment, the writing ability of students in Class 3 was obviously improved and students' interest in writing was also aroused by analyzing the results of final-term examination.The experiment proves that it is necessary to develop students' contrastive consciousness between English and Chinese while teaching writing. The ways and methods are also offered on how to develop contrastive consciousness. Firstly, the differences between English and Chinese should not be avoided but be faced by both students and teachers. Secondly, the four basic skills in learning English: listening; speaking; reading and writing, should be balanced valued in the whole teaching procedures. Thirdly, it is insisted that writing ability should be developed through reading, translating and evaluating. Only in this way can students' ability of contrasting be developed, students' interest in English writing be aroused, and students' writing ability be improve.