An Experimental Study On The Improvement Of Junior High Students' English Writing Competence Via Dictogloss

With the development of international exchange, English is more and more widely used in the world. Writing competence, as the most important part of the overall ability of using English, should be attached weight to. With the implementation of curriculum reform, the score of compositions has been increased in the Entrance Examination for Senior High School, which makes it more important to improve the students'writing ability. But the current situation of English writing in junior high schools is urgent. The students still receive the old traditional teacher-centered teaching and learning approach and they are only passive receivers. The writing class lacks active participation, interaction and communication between teacher and students, students and students. Students in junior high schools are not interested in English writing at all and some of them are even fearful about it. As a teacher teaching English in a common junior high school, the author finds that most of her students are poor in English writing and the main problems are that they make many grammar mistakes and have a low level of cohesion and coherence and so on. In order to change the current situation and discover the better way to improve the students'writing ability, the author does some researches on junior English writing and considers dictogloss as good application to English writing teaching. It can arouse the students'interest in writing, embody students'prominent status and promote the students'writing competence.Dictogloss is a text-based, task-based and learner-centered teaching method to help learners to focus on both meaning and form. It aims to develop both the receptive skill and the productive skill. In dictogloss class, a short text is read at normal speed to the learners.As the text is being read, the learners jot down key words and phrases. Then they work in small groups, pool their'battered texts'and strive to reconstruct a version of the text from their shared resources. Each group of learners produces their own reconstructed version, aiming at grammatical accuracy and textual cohesion but not at replicating the original text. Finally, the whole class reconvenes and the groups'versions are analyzed and corrected.Dictogloss is believed to be a reasonably powerful and effective teaching and learning method. Some empirical studies are conducted on dictogloss. Kowal and Swain's study (1994) shows that dictogloss does encourage students to move from the semantic processing dominant in comprehension to the grammatical processing needed for production. At home, Gao Xiaofang(1998) and Zhang Hongxia (2004) advocate dictogloss in classroom teaching of a foreign language;Liang Hongmei's study (2004) reveals the effectiveness of dictogloss in creating conditions for second language acquisition. Based on previous empirical studies at home and abroad, this paper attempts to investigate whether dictogloss stimulates the learners'interest in writing, helps the learners to reduce grammar mistakes and improve the level of cohesion and coherence, and whether it has any effect on improving the junior high school students'English writing competence and it is feasible to apply dictogloss to writing class in junior high schools.The author conducts the experimental study in two classes of Grade Eight in No.16 Tangshan Junior High School of Hebei Province. The subjects are 96 students, among whom 48 are in the experimental class and 48 in the controlled class. They have nearly the same level in English proficiency. The two classes are taught the same content by the same teacher at the same teaching pace. The only difference is that the dictogloss approach is adopted in the experimental class while the traditional method in the controlled class. Instruments used in the experiments are two questionnaires, an interview and two tests. In the interview, the author adopts the way of random sampling. Through the experiment, the author draws the following conclusions:1. Dictogloss helps to stimulate positive motivation, arouse the students'interest in writing and build up self-confidence in writing.2. Dictogloss helps students reduce grammar mistakes and improve the students'level of cohesion and coherence in writing, and thus enhance the students'writing competence.3. It is feasible to apply dictogloss to the teaching of writing in junior high schools.