The Application Of Constructivism To English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

English is a widely-used international language. The four skills of English—listening,speaking, reading and writing are interrelated. Among them, the ability to express one’s ideasin the written form in English is an achievement of an English learner. It is well known thatwriting takes up 30 points in the NMET in Shandong Province and it can also helpconsolidate what students have learned. Hence, writing plays an important part in Englishstudy. However, the time spent on writing in senior high schools is quite limited and writingteaching is often neglected. Besides, teachers often dominate the English writing class andstudents are often at a loss in the writing process. According to Senior Middle School EnglishCurriculum Standards (2003), the requirements of English writing of Band 8 include beingable to write short essays or repots based on the information conveyed with words ordiagrams and being able to write short essays, which are coherent in discourse and completein organization, to describe events or express personal views and attitudes. Therefore, in orderto meet the high standards for senior English writing, teachers are supposed to make aninvestigation into the problems existing in English writing class and then find out certaincounter-measures.Through analyzing the existing problems in the current English teaching in senior highschools, the author discusses the necessity to arouse students’interest in English writing andthe methods to guide students to participate in the whole writing process actively. Based onconstructivist theory, the author seeks for the effectiveness of the application ofconstructivism to English writing teaching and carries out the experiment of applyingconstructivism to students’English writing. The subjects are 110 students of senior Two inNO.7 Middle School of Weifang City, who are divided into experimental group andcontrolled group. Through questionnaires and interviews, the author has investigated thecurrent situation of students’English writing and their attitudes towards writing. SPSS 13.0 isemployed to analyze the data collected from the experiment. Through the analysis of the data,the author summarizes the main findings as follows: (1) Constructivism can help stimulate students’interest and build confidence towards English writing. (2) Constructivism can helpimprove students’language fluency and writing proficiency. (3) Constructivism can helppromote students’language accuracy. (4) Constructivism can help develop students’socialskills.Finally, the conclusion is drawn that the constructivist theory can arouse students’interest in writing, greatly improve their writing performance and lay a strong foundation fortheir future study and career development. Constructivism puts emphasis on real-life situation,co-operative learning and conversation and they have positive effects on writing teaching andlearning. The application of constructivism to English writing teaching can help makestudents confident in writing and help teachers know where they are going and how to getthere. However, this research is just an empirical study and it needs further study.