The Influence Of The Use Of Model Essays On Language Proficiency Of TOEFL Writing

English writing is an indispensable part of English teaching.As a language output,writing,among the four basic skills,can most reflect a learner's comprehensive English proficiency.However,in present English teaching in the universities,writing is a weak point and most students have problems in writing.For one thing,students have nothing to output.For another,they are weak in wording and phrasing.With more and more students preferring to further study overseas,English writing proficiency has become a block of gaining high scores of TOEFL examination.Since language is the most important factor to assess TOEFL independent writing,how to improve students' language proficiency becomes an important issue.Scholars from home and abroad have conducted many studies on the relationship between model essays and writing,most of which focus on the influence of model imitation,reading-based writing and continuous writing after reading on writing.There are little studies on the comparison between model translation and direct model reading.This paper is based on Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Out Hypothesis,aiming to explore the influence of model reading,both model translation and direct model reading,on language proficiency of TOEFL writing through an experiment,in hope of putting forward effective methods to increase language proficiency,namely,language accuracy,complexity and fluency.This study is intended to address these two questions:Research Question One:Can model reading improve undergraduates' language proficiency of TOEFL writing?Research Question Two:Which kind of model reading is more likely to improve undergraduates' language proficiency of TOEFL writing,model translation or direct model reading?There were two research instruments in this study:test and experiment.The experiment involved 30 participants from two classes in Fall semester of Wuhan New Channel School and lasted 6 weeks.The final results show that model reading can help to improve undergraduates'language proficiency of TOEFL writing and that model translation is more effective to improve undergraduates' language accuracy and language complexity.In the end,the author put forward some suggestions to English writing teaching and learning.Meanwhile,the author points out some deficiencies of this study and suggestions for further study on this issue.