The Application Of Computer-assisted Instruction(CAI) To The Teaching Of English Writing In High School

English, as an international language, is one of the most important medium languages. Using English correctly, not only mean reading English materials, but most importantly communicating in English. Writing is one of the main ways of language exchanges. The Ordinary Senior High School English Curriculum Criteria newly promulgated by the Ministry of Education in2002made still greater demands on the teaching of writing at Chinese high schools. In addition, the test for written expression constitutes an important portion of the NMET (National Matriculation English Test), and furthermore, the evaluation criteria for writing in NMET are becoming increasingly strict. This also has a great impact on the activities and methodology of writing teaching in Chinese senior high schools. But, the teaching of writing in nowadays exists many problems and influences the improvement of students’ writing level. Many English teachers do not understand the importance of the teaching of English writing and pay less attention to their teaching approaches and strategies. The students’ English writing level is greatly influenced. Therefore, how to improve students writing skills in the limited time has become the major concern of teachers. In response to the question, this thesis tries to show how to apply CAI (Computer-assisted Instruction) to improve students’writing ability.What I studied is how to use CAI to help a senior high school student to carry on English writing. The theory foundation of this research is constructivist theory, Krashen’s hypotheses, motivation theory and theories about writing as a process and so on. This research was undertaken by means of a two-semester experiment of writing teaching. The experimental subjects come from two classes in senior high school, total76people, one class taught in the traditional way and the other by using CAI. The two classes were taught by the same instructor and used the same teaching materials. After a succession of pre-test, post-test, a questionnaire, classroom behavior observation and an informal interview, information and statistics were gathered for a comparative study, the results show that:firstly, the students’ writing skills are biggest raised under the assistance of CAI; Secondly, the students become more and more confident in writing; Lastly, particularly make those students who fall behind benefit more.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one elaborates the research background and the meaning; Chapter two conducts a literature review, which lays down the theoretical ground for the thesis; Chapter three elaborates on the experiment and investigation procedures; Chapter four presents the investigation results followed by analyses. Chapter five draws a conclusion of the whole thesis and offers suggestions for future research after pointing.