The Application Of Contrastive Analysis To Teachin Senior High School Students’ English Writing

In senior middle schools, students often feel worried about English writing and some even lose heart in it, which affects their English scores. It is a headache for students and teaching English writing is difficult for teachers as well. Therefore, it is necessary to study how to improve the students’writing competence. In order to solve this problem, the author tries to apply contrastive analysis theory into English writing in senior high school.As early as1945, Charles Fries believed that the description of the target language in comparison with that of the mother tongue can make contribution to the preparation of the teaching materials. With some other scholars’study, contrastive analysis theory was developed and had taken on new significance. The author introduced four training ways of contrastive analysis into the experiment for students, to stimulate their inspiration and broaden their mind.This experiment was started in September2010and finished in June2011. The subjects of the experiment were107students from two classes of Tianjin No.90Middle School. The empirical instruments included two questionnaires, a pre-test and a post-test as well as interviews. By analyzing questionnaire replies, the author found out some students’writing problems. The English writing ability of the tested students was of no obvious difference. After two semesters’experiment, the author analyzed the collected data by Paired-Sample t-test. The result showed that there were great differences between the Experimental Class and the Control Class (hereinafter called EC and CC for short). After two semesters’ experiment, the scores of the posttest of the students in EC enhanced a lot. Students could distinguish the difference between native language and foreign language in English writing. According to the students" interviews, most students benefited from this experiment. It indicated that contrastive analysis in English writing was effective in stimulating students’interest in writing and improving their writing competence.