An Investigation Into The English Writing Ability Of Senior School Students

Cultivating English writing ability is one of tasks of English teaching in seniorhigh school, which is also comprehensive reflection of integrative ability to uselanguage. However, the current situation of English writing of senior school studentsis not optimistic. once they are required to write English composition, their brain iscompletely blank. Or they do not know how to continue before the article is finished.Many linguists and teachers have also done a great deal of research and discussions inthe field of English learning, and achieved a lot. However, researches of it arescattered and they usually research the English writing by choosing one perspective,such as the effect of the negative transfer of mother tongue on the English writing.What’s more, the most of researchers choose one grade as respondents, which cannotreflect the characteristics of the stages. Therefore, this research will focus on seniorstudents from three grades with the aims to find out the current situation of theirEnglish writing, the factors which influence the English writing ability and eventuallyfinds the methods of improving senior students’ English writing ability.To make a thorough understanding on high school students’ English writing ability,the writer chooses the students in Grade1、Grade2and Graded3from one seniorhigh school as samples. The writer conducts a questionnaire, test and interviews andanalyzes the data by using the Microsoft Excel.The writer finds out some problems that exist in the three grades: the obstacle ofthe psychology, the obstacle of language, the problem of the teaching methods. In thepsychological aspect, firstly, most students of three grades are not interested in theEnglish writing; secondly, they maybe practice English writing under their parentsand teachers’ request and the exam’s pressure; thirdly, some students show stronganxiety symptoms and fear of emotions on the English writing, and the students ofhigher grade have lower anxiety symptoms and fear of emotions. In the languageaspect, the writer mainly investigates the glossary usage、the sentence structure andtextual cohesion. And in this survey, through analyzing the questionnaire and the compositions, the writer finds:1. in the glossary usage, there exists misuse of parts ofspeech and collocation error. Many students always use the low-level vocabulary,for they would not like to use the new and higher-level vocabulary in case of misuseof vocabulary;2. in the sentence structure, some students use simple sentences, andsome students would like to use the compound sentences which make the compositionso complex that we cannot understand them very well;3.except for the misuse ofvocabulary and the sentence errors, many students cannot organize the articleproperly, as they are influenced by the negative transfer of mother tongue and showtheir idea indirectly. The differences in language aspect are significant for threegrades. Also through the interview and the questionnaire, the writer finds there aremany problems that we should pay attention to in writing teaching: firstly, there isnot class of writing; secondly, many students are lack of systematic knowledge ofwriting and writing technique, as the teacher just introduces some of the writingknowledge when analyzes the examination paper, which cannot make students have agood knowledge of writing skills and knowledge;3. many students ponder that theydon’t have enough practice in English writing. Although students have rich writingknowledge, they also cannot write down a good composition without enough practice.There is no significant difference in writing teaching for three grades.And the writer puts forward some suggestions: overcome the negative transfer ofmother tongue, enrich the input of target language, stimulate the interest of Englishwriting，open writing class and introduce the knowledge of writing systematically,reinforce the training of writing. The author hopes that these suggestions could beuseful for these English teachers with their writing teaching and for students toimprove their English writing ability.