An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Experiential English Teaching On English Writing Ability Of The Students Of Senior High School For The Deaf

For a long time, English writing, in senior high school, is always being a difficulty to deaf students for learning. English writing, like a bottleneck, restricts the improvement of English learning for the deaf. The biggest question of deaf students is that they have no idea on the content of writing themes and the method of language organization. According to observation for many years, the author has found that traditional English writing teaching is not very suitable with the learning characteristics of the deaf students of senior high school. At the same time, the current method of writing cannot be satisfied with the current requirements of writing for the deaf students. Traditional teaching method leads deaf students to be lack of interest in English writing, and makes deaf students have a resistance to English writing. The interest in English writing is an important factor, which directly effects on the result of improving English writing ability. So, in this study, it should not be ignored. Until now, the Department of Special Education, in our country, still does not employ a unified English Curriculum Standard for deaf schools. Similarly, there aren’t any specialized English textbooks applying to deaf schools of China. Most of deaf schools only have to use English teaching materials of normal middle school and adopt curriculum standard of regular school as a reference. Therefore, improving writing ability of the students of senior high school for the deaf is an emergency task to be solved. The author attempts to combine learning characters of deaf students with the experiential teaching of English writing method, in order to help deaf students of senior high school to excite their interest in English writing and improve their English writing ability.The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on the Theory of Kolb’s Experience Learning, Dewey’s Educational Philosophy of Pragmatism, Piaget’s Constructivism, the Theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, and the Theory of Deaf Bilingual. The main study will focuses on several questions as follows.Q1. Can the experiential English writing arouse the deaf students in senior high school to emerge greater writing interest than the traditional writing teaching?Q2. Can the experiential English writing method enhance the deaf students’ ability of English writing better than the traditional writing teaching way?Q3. What extent can the English writing level of the deaf students be enhanced through the help of experiential teaching of English writing method?This research adopts literature research method, questionnaire survey method, interview method and experimental method. In order to research the influence of experiential teaching of English writing on the interest in English writing and English writing ability of the students of high school for the deaf, forty deaf students were chosen from two intact classes of Senior Two of Blind and Deaf School of Guiyang. This school is the only one for students with both hearing and vision disabilities in the author’s hometown. Both classes are planned with two different teaching methods of English writing by the same teacher for eighteen weeks. The collected data will be analyzed with the help of SPSS16.0.The conclusion is obtained by the research as following passage. Comparing with traditional teaching of English writing, experiential teaching of English writing is not only able to improve the interest of English writing to the students of senior high school better, but also promote English writing ability to the deaf students better. However, experiential teaching of writing, as a strategy, has its limitations. It needs to cooperate with other teaching strategies so that it can play the greatest function.