Study On Chinese Postgraduates’ English Academic Writing From The Perspective Of Bruner’s Discovery Learning Theory: Problems And Solutions

With the deepening of economic globalization, international academic exchanges increase rapidly. More and more opportunities have been created for Chinese students especially for postgraduates to share. Thus, higher requirements for English academic writing have been put forward.The discovery learning mode was first put forward by Jerome S. Bruner, a famous American psychologist and educator, in The Process of Education. Soon afterwards, he elaborated his discovery learning theory in detail in his book On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. He pointed out that the development of students’ minds follows special cognitive structure, which is a proactive process of discovering, knowing and acquiring knowledge. There are four main features of discovery learning: emphasis of learning process, focus on intrinsic motivation, concentration on information extraction and stressing intuitive thinking. English academic writing, as a special learning process, better reveals the features. Only effective input can produce effective output. So the present dissertation tries to apply Bruner’s discovery learning theory to the study of the problems existing in Chinese postgraduates’ English academic writing in hoping that the ways to solve the problems would be explored. Therefore, Chinese postgraduates’ English academic writing ability would be improved.The research is conducted through contrast analysis with the help of quantitative analysis. 10 papers which have been published on journals recorded in SCI/EI Index are selected as reference samples and 30 English academic papers written by Chinese postgraduates are chosen for contrast analysis. Meanwhile, a questionnaire research is conducted among 309 postgraduates to explore the causes of the problems. Through the contrast analysis, data collecting and quantitative analysis, the problems existing in Chinese postgraduates’ English academic writing are found: 1) Those SCI/EI papers follow the internal structural and linguistic coding system of EAP. The papers follow a structure of title- author and place of employment- abstract- key words- introduction- main body- conclusion- acknowledgment- reference. The abstracts follow the mode of topic specification- background information- purpose statement- methodology and data- results/findings- implications/conclusions. The main systems of documentation are MLA and APA style. While the postgraduates’ samples are lacking in the internal structural and linguistic codes which causes structural problems such as disordered structure, hollow abstracts and inappropriate documents as well as linguistic problems such as grammar mistakes and improper expressions etc. in writing. According to Bruner, any knowledge has its own internal structure and coding system. Only by mastering those features of English academic writing can good English academic writings be achieved. 2) Discussions and shared knowledge are arranged in most of the SCI/EI papers to illustrate research significance and to exchange research contributions so as to establish balanced information structure and increase communication with readers. However, our postgraduates lack communication with readers. Most of them do not have target readers in their mind when writing which causes imbalanced information structure between the writers and the readers. 3) The SCI/EI papers are of high creativity and innovation. By contrasting, Chinese postgraduates lack intuitive thinking and are inadequate in creative thinking which leads to academic plagiarizing. In addition, through questionnaire analysis, the causes of the problems are discovered: lack of understanding of the structural and linguistic features of EAW, lack of writing confidence and intrinsic writing motivation, lack of target readers and lack of intuitive thinking ability. The present dissertation tries to explore some solutions to the above problems with the help of Bruner’s discovery learning theory in hoping that postgraduates’ English academic writing ability would be improved.The possibilities and necessities of applying discovery learning theory to English academic writing are discussed and the possible solutions to solve the above problems are offered as below: 1) stressing the imitation of EAP examples, in which the postgraduates should actively explore, absorb and internalize the coding system of English academic papers to solve language problems and stress academic regulations, 2) establishing balanced knowledge structure with that of the readers and extracting balanced information to achieve communication with readers when writing academic papers in English, 3) stimulating intuitive thinking and creative thinking to avoid academic plagiarizing. In addition, the dissertation proposes a discovery writing model for EAW in hoping that Chinese postgraduates’ English academic writing ability could be improved.In the final part, the dissertation summarizes the major findings in the study and mentions the limitations of the study. At last, some suggestions are raised for the further study in future.