A Schema-theory Based Study On The Improvement Of The College Students’ English Writing

College English Test-Band4is of great importance for non-English majorstudents. However, some related survey shows that students’ writingcompetence in CET4is far from satisfactory. The average score of writing testin CET4is usually between5and7(the total score is15), which is lower thanthe passing score9. Thus improving students’ writing ability has become theurgent task for English teachers and language scholars. The author conducts anempirical research on the application of schema theory to non-English majors’English writing teaching, employing both qualitative and quantitative methodsin analyzing the data collected from the writing tasks, questionnaires andface-to-face interviews to find the differences before and after training. Beforethe experiment,120freshmen of non-English majors are randomly chosen as asample. The subjects are divided into control group and experimental group.The former receives traditional writing teaching. The latter receives a ten-weekschema-theory based writing training. The author goes on to make statisticaltreatments with questionnaires, the interview, the pretest and posttest in writing.The data is processed with SPSS17.0. The result shows:(1) Schema-theory based writing training has a great effect on non-Englishmajors’ writing ability, which also helps college students change their writinghabits and writing mode.(2) Students’ linguistic accuracy, content correctnessand formal appropriateness have been achieved after schema-based writingtraining.(3) Significant difference appears between the pretest and the posttest in the experimental group. Students receiving schema-based writing instructionhave made great progress in EFL writing.(4) The participants in experimentalgroup hold a positive attitude toward the new way of writing teaching.The author points out limitations and provides some suggestions for thefuture study in the conclusive part.