The Influence Of Time And Text Length On Communicative Effectiveness And Accuracy Of The Writings Of Middle School Students

The thesis presents an empirical study about the effect of time allotment and word count on the writings of middle school students from two aspects:communicative effectiveness and accuracy of the writings.384 students of 1,080 2nd grade senior middle school students from 16 streamed classes in Yanhua Middle School were selected as subjects, and the assigned writing task was "Parting Words on Graduation" that all subjects were familiar with. They were required to compose the writings in constrained time span with the appropriate text length set in writing test rubric. Besides, time allotment had four levels:20,25,30,35 minutes, and word count had four levels too:100,120,140,160 words. The test administers utilized the subjects' self-learning period to conduct this testing experiment in 16 streamed classes respectively in order not to disturb regular teaching practice. The written samples were assessed in terms of the informative and accurate level of the writings.This research is aimed at finding out an ideal time and text length for senior middle school students in the context of an inland province in China to demonstrate the most informative and accurate writing performance. Actually, the studies on the influence of time allotment on quality of English writings are numerous, but as for whether and how much it affects scores of English writings, no agreement has not been made. In addition, the studies of word count on quality of English writings are sketchy. And the researchers mostly selected English majors or college students as subjects so the results of their studies couldn't be applied and generalized to middle school students. Therefore, it's urgent to conduct this study.The major findings of this study show that, time allotment and word count influence communicative effectiveness and accuracy of the writings of middle school students not in the same way. The details are as follows:(1) Time allotment exerts no significant influence on communicative effectiveness of the writings but its effect upon accuracy of the writings is significant. 25-minute writings prove to be the most informative when text length is set. (2) Word count has no influence on accuracy of the written essays but its effect on communicative effectiveness of the writings reaches the significant level. 120-word writings boast the highest level of accuracy.This study clearly reflects the influence of time allotment and word count on communicative effectiveness and accuracy composed by senior middle school students. Our findings are beneficial for the students to fully demonstrate their writing performance, and for the writing teachers in middle school to improve their English writing teaching. And meanwhile the study will provide theoretical and empirical implications for the writing testing in middle school.