Research On The Argumentative Composition Teaching Sequence Of Senior Middle School

The argumentative composition teaching plays a very important part incomposition teaching of senior middle school. However, most of teachingcontents are lacking in general planning and arrangement. Thus, the seniormiddle school students have failed to obtain systematic writing technique, andhave obvious problems in many stages of argumentative composition writing.Such as, the materials are not enough or contents are empty; the abstractthinking ability is poor, or rational analysis is inadequate; there is an examplebut no evidence, and lacking in depth; the demonstration is illogical and besidesthe common sense; the dialectical thinking ability is inadequate, the scope ofmind is narrow, and the view is obsolete even one-sided; the writing is patterned,and can not make a operative demonstration about the thesis. The abovestatement obviously restrains the writing ability of the senior middle schoolstudents, and affects their scores of composition in the college entranceexamination. In order to change the above situations, the construction of anintegral, scientific and strict teaching sequence of argumentative composition ofsenior middle school is vitally necessary.This paper is based on the research of the argumentative composition teachingof senior middle school, the representative teaching sequence of both ancientand modern, Chinese and foreign, and the current situation of argumentativecomposition teaching of senior middle school. Its theoretical basis is theconstructivism theory, tutorial control theory, system theory, and processing composition teaching theory. According to the characteristic of development ofthinking ability for the senior middle school students, new course standard ofsenior middle school, development trend of proposition composition in thecollege entrance examination, complying with the principle of gradualimprovement, simple and practical, and combining with ourselves’ teachingpractice, a scientific and practical argumentative composition teaching sequenceof senior middle school is proposed.In this teaching sequence, different grades correspond to different teachinggoals and contents. For example, the main goal of students in Grade1of seniormiddle school is to accumulate material, abstract and describe the viewpoint,improve the ability of support thesis with argument, and write a compositionboth with examples and arguments. The students are encouraged to write truefeelings and real events boldly. For students in Grade2of senior middle school,the main goal is to train the ability of thinking and solving problems. Theyshould be teach to prove their thesis by different theories and methods, makeclear the relations between the arguments and separated or total thesis, build alogical composition structure, and how to revise a composition. For students inGrade3of senior middle school, the main goal is to improve the compositionlevel. It includes a deep and novel idea, concise but compact language, elegantliterary, and some highlights. Indeed, the above contents are not segregated, butan organic whole. Just each phase has a bias towards. Thus, the teachingsequence forms a unified whole knowledge system, which runs through all the stages of the argumentative composition writing.From Sept.2008to Jun2011, the above teaching sequence has beenintroduced in the argumentative composition practice of senior middle school bythe author. Compared with the parallel classes, the composition scores have amarked improvement. However, some problems still exist in the implementingof the teaching sequence, which expect to be solved in the future. It is alsohoped that this teaching sequence can give a help for Chinese teachers of thesenior middle school in argumentative composition teaching, and supply somevaluable reference to related studies.