An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of CUP Hypothesis On High School Students' Writing Ability

Writing,as an elementary skill in English learning,has attracted more and more attention from teachers and scholars,and researches on English writing have covered various aspects.Most of the researches are about the influence that native language exercises on second language writing.In fact,among these researches,more are focused on the study of negative transfer of mother tongue than on the positive transfer.Based on Cummins'(1979)Common Underlying Proficiency Hypothesis(CUP Hypothesis),this paper aims to explore the relationship between Chinese high school students' ability in argumentative writing in Chinese and in English.An empirical study is made to find out whether there exists positive correlation between Chinese writing and English writing.The subjects in this study were from a top class and a regular class in Fuzhou 18th Senior High School.58 students were picked from the top class and the regular class apiece.With the help of SPSS13.O,the quantitative analysis of the subjects,scores in argumentative writing shows that a marked correlation exists between Chinese and English writing ability among the top students rather than the regular students,which means Chinese argumentative writing ability has an positive influence on English writing,and students5 English proficiency plays an important role in their English writing.The qualitative analysis of all students' essays reveals that the higher students'argumentative writing score in Chinese is,the higher their English equivalent,especially in terms of content,coherence,theme and the like.In contrast,with the limited English proficiency,the students in the regular class feel it difficult to borrow their Chinese writing skills in English writing,and there appear more grammatical errors and lexical errors in their essays.Besides,the discourse analysis of essays reveals that although students are affected by Chinese traditional rhetorical patterns,they are more inclined to deduce types of discourse patterns in argumentative writing,which is the effect of education.What's more,there is a significant difference between the top class and the regular class in the use of connectives.The students in the top class are able to use more cohesion methods and connectives smoothly and naturally.It shows that the students who are good at Chinese writing will pay more attention to the use of cohesion between sentences or paragraphs,and use more methods to express their views in English writing.The result of the empirical study supports the Common Underlying Proficiency Theory.There is a correlation between Chinese and English argumentative wring ability.The influence of Chinese writing ability on English writing ability is overwhelmingly positive although it should be combined with such factors as English proficiency and so on.This paper also pro,duces some implications in the teaching of English writing in high school.For example,teachers should pay more attention to improving students,proficiency in English,and helping them to understand the different ways of expressing ideas in English and in mother tongue.The purpose of this paper is to arouse English teachers' attention to the positive influence of Chinese writing ability on English writing.Therefore,only by combining students' English proficiency and their Chinese writing ability can students enhance their English writing ability gradually.