EFL Writing Teaching In Senior High School Based On Cognitive Load Theory

As an important component of English language learning, English writing can best reflect students’language ability. Because of the newly writing objectives in the Senior high school English curriculumpromulgated, more and more teachers have realized the importance of writing in EFL teaching. Teachersand students have made great effort on English writing, but the present English writing situation is notoptimistic. Unsuitable managing of cognitive load causes heavy cognitive load, which hinders studentsconstructing schema during the process of writing. Therefore, in order to solve the writing problems, theauthor from perspective of allocation of resource improves students’ English writing.Swller (1997) and some other scholars divided the cognitive load into three parts: intrinsic cognitive load,extraneous cognitive load, and germane cognitive load. The total cognitive load resource is limited. Whenintrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load are higher, the germane cognitive load is lower. It iseasier to cause cognitive overload under such condition. However, When intrinsic cognitive load andextraneous cognitive load are lower, the germane cognitive load is higher, which is useful to promote learning.In English writing, intrinsic cognitive load is related to the presentation of writing materials; extraneouscognitive load is affected by the complex of writing materials and learners’ schema construction; and germanecognitive load is related with learners’ confidence and interesting of the English writing. In order to reduce thecognitive load in English writing, the author did empirical research on teaching design based on CLT. Duringthe study, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed. In the study, the author randomlyselected one experimental class including28boys and17girls, and the teaching experiment lasted for nineweeks. The author analyzed the data through SPSS13.0, including descriptive analysis, means comparison,and paired sample T-test. Through analyzing the data from the experiment results, the author drew that thewriting teaching strategies based on CLT play a vital role in improving students’ writing. To optimize teachingdesign can help students to reduce the CL of the writing to improve English writing.The study implicated that training design based on cognitive load theory can stimulate studentmotivation, enhance students’ awareness of using strategies to reduce the cognitive load in writing, andimprove students writing. In the future teaching, we should consider students’ cognitive load, and instructstudents to use writing strategies reasonably to reduce cognitive load in English writing.