An Empirical Study On Improving Chinese English Majors' Writing Ability In Argumentative Essays

Among the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing that must be mastered in English learning, writing is the main means to measure one's competence of language producing and using. It is a comprehensive embodiment of students'English level, and one of the standards to measure the teaching effect. Argumentative writing is the genre that students always encounter both in colleges and in society. It is the one that appears in various English exams most offen. Comparing with other three genres, argumentative proposes higer requirement on accuracy of language and logicality of content. Former researches'researches show that there exist many problems in Chinese English majors'argumentative writing.In view of the importance of English argumentative writing and the difficulties that English majors of China usually encounter in English argumentative writing, this thesis proposes an experimental teaching model of English writing which includes four training stages:model analyzing, mimic writing, conversion of language styles, and free writing. It is based on and enriches the traditional teaching approach. It draws of the essence from traditional teaching model and rectifies its deficiencies. The purpose of this thesis is to study:(1) Whether or not the experimental writing teaching model is effective for improving English majors'writing ability in argumentative essays? (2) To what extent, could the teaching model promote English majors'writing ability in argumentative essays? (3) Whether could the experimental writing teaching model arousing students'interest in English writing and learning, and whether students are more satisfied with the experimental teaching model than with the traditional one?The author selected two natural second-year classes from the English department of Shijiazhuang Foreign Language Institute, total 64 English majors, to engage a 12-week teaching experiment. The author took one class as the experimental class (EC), the other one as the control class (CC). During the experiment, the EC was taught by the experimental teaching mode of English writmg, whereas the CC was instructed by the traditional teaching method.The results of the study show that:(1) the experimental teaching model for English writing promoted argumentative writing ability of students of the EC effectively during the three-month experiment (P= 0.000< 0.05); (2) its effect on improving students' writing ability in English argumentative essays was significantly higher than the traditional teaching method (the t value of the EC is-17.168, the t value of the CC is-8.753); (3) the teaching model still increased students'interest in argumentative writing (EC,48%; CC,32%), and their satisfaction for the experimental teaching mode was obviously higher than that for the traditional one (EC,82%; CC,58%).The present study may offer a reference not only for similar studies, but also for teachers of English writing and students. However, due to the constraints in time and conditions, the results of the present study have some limitations, and there are also many issues to be studied further.