The Research On Error Correction Strategies Of Senior High School Students9 English Writing

The new curriculum standard of high school English clearly states,“Language is the most important tool of thinking and communicating, which is also important for people to participate in social activities. Language is of great significance to promote human being’s all-round development. With the increasing globalization of economy and human life, foreign languages have become one of the basic qualities which are necessary for people all around the world. Therefore, to learn and to master foreign languages,especially English, is of great significance.”As is known to all, listening, speaking, reading and writing are four basic skills for English language learners to grasp. Listening and reading are input processes of language, while speaking and writing are output processes. In these four basic skills, writing is the most important as well as the most difficult one. Writing can reflect not only language learners’ proficiency of mastering English but also their ability of using language.According to the new curriculum standard(Ministry of Education,2003) senior high school students’ English writing skills are divided into different levels. Senior three students will take the college entrance examination. Their English writing level should reach the eighth level to meet the demand of the college entrance examination. If the students meet the standard of Level 8, they should be able to paraphrase the reading article or write a summary; they should be able to write essays or reports in accordance with the information provided in the texts and diagrams; they should be able to write an article fluently without making mistakes on structures or meanings and narrate or express their attitudes or opinions;they should be able to write an article with concise and readable words.However, in writing teaching practice, students’ language errors are everywhere, and many senior high school students can’t write a complete and decent sentence or paragraphs with clear meaning. Many teachers and students consider writing ineffective and a waste of time. No matter how hard they try, errors are unavoidable. However, writing is very important in college entrance examination, so exploring an effective method of writing is particularly necessary. The research hypothesis is that the comprehensive use of various error correction strategies in English writing teaching can effectively improve senior high school students’ ability of error correcting and English writing. Three research questions are discussed in this thesis.(1) Can students’ ability of error correcting be effectively improved by comprehensively using error correction strategies?(2) Can students’ ability of English writing be effectively improved by comprehensively using error correction strategies?(3) What kind of error correction strategy do students like best?In this research, the author conducted an English writing empirical research on 72 students of Sunite Right Banner Comprehensive High School based on the theory of Error Analysis and the theory of Constructivism and the previous research achievements. The research is from August 11 th to December 15 th. The subjects are 72 students in Grade Three of this high school, who are from Class 4 and Class 5. Class 5 is experimental class and Class 4 is control class. The students of these two classes are asked to write2 articles every week and finish 2 short passage correction tasks. But the error correction strategies in two classes are different. In EC, three error correction strategies are used comprehensively, while in CC, only one error correction strategy-- teacher correction is used. By analyzing the scores of both pre-test and post test of two classes, the author answered the research questions.(1) Students’ ability of correcting errors can be improved by comprehensively using error correction strategies.(2) Students’ ability of writing can be improved by comprehensively using error correction strategies.(3) Three strategies were all liked by students. According to somestudents’ choices, sometimes they would like teacher to correct their errors,sometimes they would choose peer correction, and sometimes they would prefer self correction. But relatively speaking, students still preferred teacher correction, and then self correction. The number of students who preferred peer correction was relatively less. Therefore, the research hypothesis is verified that the comprehensive use of various error correction strategies in English writing teaching can effectively improve senior high school students’ ability of error correcting and English writing.The results of this research has some practical significance for high school English writing teaching, especially for those high school in remote areas. In high school English writing teaching, teachers should comprehensively use three error correction strategies to improve students’ writing ability. However, because of various reasons and limitations, the research still needs to be improved, and the results need more researches to make further exploration.