The Application Of Brainstorming To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

In senior high school,among the four basic English skills(listening,speaking,reading and writing),writing is a significant way of testing one’s language proficiency.For senior high students,having a good command of English writing is a necessity.It is not only the demand of the New English Curriculum Standards and the College Entrance Examination,but also the demand of society.However,the present situation of writing teaching in senior high school is far from satisfactory.Most of the students are not interested in writing.What’s worse,some even show great fear of writing.They have no confidence in improving their English writing ability.When given a topic,they do not know what to write and how to write.Problems exist in their compositions in content,language,structure and so on.The reason for these problems lies in the application of traditional writing teaching methods.Product-oriented approach is found dominant in writing teaching in senior high school.With this approach,writing class goes this way: the teacher explains the topic,analyzes the writing sample and then gives some tips while the students are just immersed in note taking and have no opportunity to express themselves and communicate with others.They are asked to finish the compositions in limited time.What the teacher emphasizes most is the final product.In writing class,the teacher is seen as the center of the class,and the students are just the audience.Under such a circumstance,it is quite necessary to explore new writing teaching methods.Since brainstorming was put forward by A.F.Osborn,it has been widely employed in many fields to generate ideas and solve problems.Many scholars have applied it to writing teaching.However,most of the studies are aimed at college students and still stay at theoretical level.Therefore,the researcher is determined to do empirical research on the application of brainstorming to English writing teaching in senior high school.The thesis is aimed at testifying whether brainstorming is effective in improving students’ attitude to writing and promoting their writing proficiency.The questions to be dealt with are as follows:1.What influence does brainstorming have on senior high students’ attitude to writing?2.What influence does brainstorming have on senior high students’ writing proficiency?3.How can brainstorming be well implemented into English writing class?The researcher chooses 122 students from the NO.1 Senior High School of Luanchuan to conduct an experiment by using two questionnaires,seven writing assignments and an interview.Before the experiment,the two classes are of similar writing level.During the three-month experiment,brainstorming is applied in the experimental class,and traditional method in the controlled class.After the experiment,the data are collected and analyzed by SPSS20.0.The results show that brainstorming can arouse students’ interest and improve their confidence in writing.Brainstorming is also effective in promoting students’ writing proficiency in content,language and structure.At the same time,some problems in implementing brainstorming are also presented,as well as the suggestions on optimizing the application of this method.There are altogether six chapters in this thesis.In chapter one,a brief introduction of the thesis is presented,including the background and significance of the research,research questions,research methods and the structure of the thesis.Chapter two deals with the literature review.Constructivism theory,as the theoretical basis,is stated in chapter three.The researcher describes the research design in detail in chapter four,after which in chapter five data analysis and discussion are demonstrated.Finally,the conclusion is drawn in chapter six.