Alignment Effect Of Model Essay Writing-up In L2 Writing

Writing ability is a very crucial skill in foreign language learning and teaching. In recent years, based on second language acquisition theory, reading-to-writing method was put forward by Prof. Wang. And a lot of empirical studies show that reading-to-writing is one of the efficient ways to improve writing. Learning English can not be separated from language comprehension and language production. Their closely connection can give rise to alignment effect in language learning. The more connection between comprehension and production, the stronger alignment they will get. Thus, the learning effect will be much better. However, as for English writing in college teaching, teachers usually show students a complete model essay for them to learn writing. Few teachers show incomplete model essays to students. No matter they are complete model essays or incomplete model essays, the students should first read the reading materials and then write. But the learning effect will be much different.Therefore, the current study, according to Interactive Alignment Model, taking different English proficiency learners into consideration, makes an attempt to use incomplete model essays to teach college students. It aims to explore whether there is alignment effect in written production by a model essay writing-up. And it also discusses the alignment effect of different English proficiency at various linguistic levels as well as the error rates between high proficiency group and low proficiency group. In light of these research objectives, the following questions are to be addressed:Do L2 learners have alignment on L2 language writing by model essay writing-up? If yes,1) What are the differences between different L2 proficiency learners on lexical alignment?2) What are the differences between different L2 proficiency learners on linguistic structures' alignment?3) What are the differences between different L2 proficiency learners on error rates?The researcher in the study elected 32 freshmen and 32 sophomores' English majors as participants from South Translation College of Sichuan International Studies University in Chongqing. They were classified into high proficiency group and low proficiency group according to their English proficiency. Under the same learning condition, they were received six weeks' model essay writing-up exercises. And then the researcher collected their written production in the final test to analyze the different alignment effect and error rates of different language proficiency levels.The results showed that there was alignment effect in model essay writing-up. At lexical level, low proficiency group was more prone to use the words appeared in the original text; at the level of linguistic structures, low proficiency learners produced more fully-aligned structures than high proficiency group. As for error categories, the error rate of low proficiency group was lower than high proficiency group in number agreement errors and tense errors. There was not difference between the two groups in misuse of copula, articles and non-finite verbs. While, the error rate of low proficiency group was much higher than high proficiency group in Chinglish. At last, some implications in this thesis were put forward on second language writing teaching and some suggestions were also put forward for further study.