Experimenting With Using Pre-writing Activities In Teaching English Writing At Secondary High School English Level

Nowadays, in the field of education, teachers are paying more and more attention to students' writing ability, because of the high demand of writing ability. However, the author learnt by investigation that Chinese Middle School students have many difficulties in writing. The students don't know how to write the composition or how to start writing, while writing is still important in National Matriculation English Test (NMET). So the teachers have to do something to solve the problem.The purpose of the current paper is to bear testimony to the hypothesis that pre-writing activities---cubing, brainstorming and free-writing --- can be used in writing class effectively and they can improve students' writing ability and can raise students' motivation to write. The current thesis tries to get the approval by means of carrying out pre-writing activity experiment in Zhi Chunli Middle School, Beijing, with four classes in Grade Three in the year 2006.The result from the experiment showed the experimental classes who took pre-writing activity training made greater progress in the writing ability compared with the comparative class. This showed that pre-writing activities are useful in writing class. The analysis of the results of the experiment, the discussion on the prospect of pre-writing activities and the limitations of the thesis have made the space that can be improved in the future.