An Experimental Study Of Improving Students’ English Writing Performance In Junior High School Based On Formulaic Language

Formulaic language is the general definition of ready-made language structures, which can be referred to the common but negligible linguistic phenomenon in the acquisition process. Rather than being subject to analysis and generation by the grammar, formulaic language can be stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use. There are some typical formulaic language: collocations, idioms, preferred ways of saying things, turns of phrase, routines, prayers, proverbs, etc. Recently, a growing number of English researchers have recognized positive functions of formulaic language instruction on English learning and therefore used the related theories to guide teaching. However, empirical researches of formulaic language conducted to English teaching are rare, especially English writing teaching in junior middle school.Therefore, the author of this thesis takes routine English teaching in junior high school as entry point, and carries out an empirical study on the systemically formulaic language instruction. In this experiment, 70 students from an intact class in junior grade two of Lushan International school are chosen as the experimental subjects. Ahead of the 4 months experiment on formulaic language teaching, students are required to test their writing ability and finish pre-questionnaires. In the end, post-tests of writing, post-questionnaires and interviews are distributed to students to collect related information about the usage as well as efficiency of formulaic language in writing. The author adopts SPSS to process the data.This study puts formulaic language into routine English instruction in middle school, focusing on solving the following three questions: how to conduct a survey effectively to explore the juniors’ recognition to the formulaic language knowledge and its use in writing; how to carry out the formulaic language instruction effectively in English class of middle school, thus enhancing the juniors’ input and output of formulaic language; how to instruct students to apply the acquired formulaic language in classroom into writing practice. The training process includes:(1) Awareness training, the author creates and introduces formulaic language system based on textbooks to cultivate the students’ awareness of formulaic language;(2) Input training, which is achieved by teaching section A so as to accumulate formulaic language;(3) Output training, the author pays more attention to section B, aiming at enhancing the efficiency of formulaic language output;(4) Writing training, students are asked to apply the acquired formulaic language into English writing.The result data reveal that: this study, focused on formulaic language instruction, strengthens students’ awareness of formulaic language, thus improving their writing ability. After the experiment, the students of experiment class, who mastered an increasing number of formulaic language, did much better than those of the control class in writing test. Hence, the author of thesis attempts to probe the instruction mode with the integration of formulaic language into routine teaching so as to strengthen students’ awareness of formulaic language and improve their writing ability, thus taking it as the practical reference for the English writing cultivation in junior high school.