A Study On Controlled English Writing In Senior High Schools

In Chinese middle schools, there are various approaches to teaching English speaking, reading and listening. However, teaching English writing is a weak field. Admittedly, this problem has attracted a great deal of attention from English teachers and they have made great efforts to improve the situation. To one's disappointment, students' English writing proficiency remains very low. For this sake, the author tried to apply "controlled writing" approach to teaching English writing in senior high schools.Controlled writing means control on writing process and phrases, sentence patterns, linking words and styles. It was born in the late 1950s and the early 1960s when Pincas made an attempt to combine structural linguistics and behavioral psychology. Controlled writing seems to have its roots in Charles Fries's oral approach, the precursor of the audio-lingual method of second language teaching. Under controlled writing are the notions that language is speech (from structural linguistics) and that learning is habit formation (from behaviorist psychology). Students are made to mimic and repeat in drills the phonetic and syntactic patterns of the target language. Writing was regarded as a secondary concern, essentially as reinforcement for oral habits.This thesis presents an experiment conducted in Chongqing Fuling No.5 Middle School. The subjects consisted of 110 Senior High III in this school. The study lasted one school semester with the objects to improve Chinese senior high students' English writing proficiency through controlled writing. The data from questionnaires and language proficiency pre-test and post-test are analyzed by means of SPSS with the results as follows:1. Students' writing ability has greatly improved.2. Their motivation and confidence in writing has been enhanced.3. They have made progress in their English writing strategies. On the whole, controlled writing has positive effects on improving students' English writing in senior high schools. The analysis also reveals some limitation of the writing approach and leaves some room for further research.