How To Use Guided Writing To Improve Senior Students' Writing Ability

In recent years, some progress has been made in the teaching of Senior English writing, but there is a lot to be improved. The main problems are: most students made masses of errors in writing; some students even give up writing. Through the questionnaire, the writer found out many problems. Besides, how teachers instruct process writing and what teaching methods are available have been debated by some researchers and teachers. In writing,"guided writing"may often be used by teachers at home and abroad. However whether guided writing can arouse students'interests in writing and whether students can really benefit from guided writing haven't yet been tested completely. Therefore a 28-week teaching experiment was conducted to test the effect of guided writing, and meanwhile the writer put forward a hypothesis: It is hypothesized that students can understand and write through"guided writing". This method benefits the cultivation of students'writing ability in English, which is one of the purposes of the language learning. If their interests are aroused, they will have confidence to take up writing practices.The subjects consisted of 112 students in Senior Grade Two in the No.2 Middle School of the League of XiLinGuoLe. All the subjects had studied English formally for at least six years in primary and junior school. All the subjects participate in the experiment. The experiment lasted for 28 weeks (from March to December of 2004).A questionnaire and a pre-test and post-test were employed in the experiment to explore the students'problems in writing. The results of the questionnaire and tests show that guided writing is a practical and effective teaching methods. 70% of the students improved their writing ability and 75% became interested in English writing.