An Empirical Study Of Rewriting Training In College English Writing Instruction Based On Output Theory

English writing plays a key part in the SLA, and College EnglishCurriculum Requirements claim that students’ English writing level should reachthe general standard. Whereas some research shows that college English writingteaching has not been stressed and the learners’ writing level has been under therequirements. Therefore, it is necessary to study college English writingteaching and learning. This thesis hopes to provide guidance and help for theimprovement of college students’ writing level.Output Theory research demonstrates that abundant output can improvelearners’ English level. Rewriting belongs to Output Theory. Rewriting texts is usually used in the Mother-tongue writing training, yet it is not common torewrite texts in the SLA. Based on Output Theory and its noticing function andhypothesis-test function, the present thesis uses a text-based rewriting trainingmethod to conduct the empirical study. The purpose of the thesis is to explorethe effectiveness and feasibility of the rewriting in college English writingteaching. Meanwhile, the thesis explores whether consciously using the noticingfunction and the hypothesis-test function can improve the learners’ Englishwriting level.137freshmen in Shanxi Normal University participated in the12-weekexperiment and the author divided them into CG, EG1and EG2. CG took thetraditional writing method. EG1and EG2took the text-based rewriting trainingmethod while they had different tasks. EG1consciously marked the noticedlanguage problems in the process of rewriting; EG2not only consciouslymarked the noticed language problems but also invited peers to edit or correct the noticed problems. At the beginning of the experiment, CG, EG1and EG2participated in thepre-test in order to find out whether their writing level was significantlydifferent. The ANOVA test results showed that their writing level did not havesignificant difference. At the end of the experiment, three groups engaged in thepost-test. The ANOVA test results showed that two EGs improved their writinglevel significantly. After the post-test, students in the EG2engaged in thequestionnaire and the interview. All students in the EG2filled in thequestionnaire, while several students randomly selected from EG2took part inthe interview. The questionnaire includes six aspects, which investigate students’attitudes and opinions to rewriting experiment. The interview includes fouraspects, which are the complement of the questionnaire.Through the quantitative analysis and the qualitative analysis, the resultsof the research reveal that:1) rewriting training can improve learners’ English writing level;2) in the course of rewriting, marking the noticed languageproblems by learners can improve their writing level;3) in the course ofrewriting, both self-marking the noticed language problems and peer-editing aremore effective for improving learners’ writing level;4) learners accept therewriting method and expect to continue the rewriting training.