On The Training Of English Thinking Ability In Senior English Writing Teaching

The training and cultivation of English writing ability is an important part ofEnglish teaching in high schools. English writing training can help students to masterEnglish language knowledge better, and it is also one of the effective measures tofoster students’habit of English thinking. Writing is an important tool incommunication; furthermore, it is an important indicator to measure students’abilityof English learning. English writing requires students to conduct a more rigorousthinking on the topic, logic expression, and semantic representation so as to producean analytical and appropriate written expression. Writing is a process where studentsplay an active and creative role.At present, most of the English teaching in high schools is more concerned aboutlanguage ability, but ignores the central position of English thinking abilities inlanguage learning. As a result, it has weakened the training and cultivation of Englishthinking ability. It often happens that when the high school students start to writeEnglish composition, they intend to think in the mother tongue firstly and lack theability of discourse thinking, and are short of more rigorous logical thinking abilitiesand a broad and rich content. Therefore, to carry further studies on the relationshipbetween language and thought, renew the philosophy of English writing teaching, andemploy various training methods to overcome the negative transfer of mother-tonguethinking in English writing become challenging and urgent tasks for high schoolEnglish teachers as well as researchers.The essential problem that troubles English writing teaching is the relationshipbetween language and thinking. The scholars abroad have formed three views to thisrelationship: one view holds that language and thinking are inseparable, one factionsupports that they are independent from each other, and one view is that thinking isbased on language. However, domestic scholars believe that they are related closely.But till today, the relationship studies have not formed a mature system. Throughmaking an integrated use of literature reviews, comparative analysis, experiments andother basic educational research methods, the present study has explored the relationship between language and thinking deeply. In addition, the study hascompared the different effects of mother-tongue thinking and English thinking onsenior English writing by the application of investigation and TAP. Through dataanalysis and discussion, the research shows that most high school students, althoughwith different levels of English language proficiency, apply mother-tongue thinking tocomposition concept and design. Thus, in the process of English writing,mother-tongue thinking presents more fluency than English thinking. In different waysof thinking process, the participation of Chinese is also different. And to some extent,most of the composition concepts will be impacted by mother-tongue, especially thenegative influence embodied in the text output. The research finds out that the moreinvolved is mother-tongue thinking in English composition writing, the lower scorethe students will get. And on the contrary, the more involved is English thinking inEnglish composition writing, the higher score the students will get. Besides, thestudents’English language level as well as their cognitive structure has great influenceon English writing. It is well proved that certain characteristics of English thinkingability such as breadth, flexibility and depth, are significant for English writing.Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that it is essential and important to carry thetargeted training and cultivation of students’English thinking abilities in the processof English writing teaching.This study presents an effective way of training high school students’Englishthinking ability in English writing teaching. It believes that high school Englishteaching should pay close attention to the analysis of college entrance Englishexamination in recent years, attach importance to the extensive teaching of Englishcultural background knowledge in language teaching, and improve teachers’sensitivities to the differences between Chinese and English thinking patterns. At thesame time, teachers need to strengthen the input of the English language in classroom,increase the autonomy and the enthusiasm of the students’English thinking habit.Besides, the targeted training of different thinking skills should be conducted, and theeffective guidance on writing rules and skills should be stressed.It is true that English thinking ability can’t be trained and improved in one day, thus high school teachers should help students form a cognitive structure of Englishthinking in writing practice by using comprehensive means. It is essential thatstudents’ learning autonomy should be improved; the negative impact of mother-tongue thinking involved in English writing should be weakened, so as to enhance thestudents’ writing achievements and promote the development of high school Englishwriting teaching.