An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Dictogloss On Senior High School Students' English Writing Competence

Writing competence is an important indicator of learners' mastery of a certain language.The English component in Chinese College Entrance Exanimation keeps raising its standards for the writing part.For those who plan to study abroad,they have to take the IELTS or TOEFL test,both of which put writing skill in a position as important as reading,listening,and speaking skill.How to develop students' writing competence has become a pressing issue facing high school English teachers.Traditionally,English writing is taught together with reading.Under teachers' guidance,students are supposed to get the main idea of a piece of reading material,analyze its structure,appreciate its language and then try to apply what they have learned from the reading into their own writing.However,boredom may develop when this way of teaching is practiced for long periods of time.Students feel reluctant to participate in class,finishing writing tasks passively with low efficiency.Dictogloss is an activity where learners are required to reconstruct a text based on what they hear.The process of reconstruction involves group discussion and the reconstructed text is subject to peer reviewing.Dictogloss activity has a long history in Western countries,and is now attracting increasing attention from Chinese scholars and teachers.The author attempts to introduce dictogloss into high school English class and see how it affects students' writing competence.The research methods used in the study include a three-month experiment,questionnaire,and interview.The subjects of the study are fifty-six students from a foreign language school in Suzhou,Jiangsu Province.The research questions addressed are as follows:(1)Can dictogloss improve high school students' writing competence and how does it affect coherence and cohesion,lexical resources,and grammatical accuracy in students' writing practice?(2)Does dictogloss exert a positive influence on high school students' interest and confidence in English writing?After careful analyses of the test results,combined with data from questionnaires and interviews,some major findings of the study are summarized as follows:Firstly,dictogloss can improve students' writing competence.After three months' experiment,students made remarkable progress in coherence and cohesion,choice of words,and grammar in their writing practice.Secondly,dictogloss can positively change students' attitudes towards English writing.Most students are in favor of introducing dictogloss into English class,claiming that it has increased their interest in writing and expressing their willingness to participate in similar activities in the future.