A Study On The Application Of Content-based Instruction In Secondary Vocational English Writing Teaching

The syllabus for Secondary Vocational School(SVE)English Course states clearly that the goal of SVS English teaching is to strengthen the basic language knowledge and cultivate students’integrated English language competence,particularly the ability of using English to handle business activities in the daily life and real workplace.Writing as the main part of the integrated English language competence has been a weak link in secondary vocational schools English teaching and is also considered to be the most difficult skill by students.At present,the students have low interests and motivation in English writing and their overall writing level needs to be improved.Content-based instruction integrates language learning with content learning and has been proved an effective approach to second and foreign language teaching because it can simulate students’ learning motivation and interests and improve their language learning ability.At present in China,the main CBI research is focusing on the application of CBI in elementary,middle schools and universities.Many scholars and experts have carried out lots of researches on its effectiveness and feasibility of CBI in English reading teaching,rarely in English writing teaching,especially in the field of English writing teaching in a SVS.Based on input hypothesis,constructivism and cooperative language learning theory,the present study adopts CBI in English writing teaching in secondary vocational schools to explore whether it is helpful and effective to improve SVS students’English writing achievements and can stimulate SVS students’ English writing interest and increase their writing motivation.Experimental approach is employed in the present research.The subjects of this experiment are 66 secondary vocational school second-year students from two natural classes of Qinghai Vocational Technical Institute of Animal,Husbandry and Vet.They all major in Animal,Husbandry and Veterinary Science.32 students come from Class 6 and the other 34 students are from class 7.Class 6 was assigned as the experimental class and Class 7 was assigned as the controlled class.The students in Class 6 was instructed under the theme-based model of CBI,while the students in Class 7 was instructed by the traditional English writing teaching method---the product approach.The instruments include questionnaires,writing tests and interview.This research mainly used Descriptive Statistics and Independent Samples T-test of SPSS20.0 software.By analyzing the data of questionnaires,tests and interviews,the results show the following findings:(1)CBI is helpful and effective to improve SVS students’ English writing achievements.(2)CBI can stimulate SVS students’ English writing interest and increase their writing motivation.Based on the experimental findings and discussions of the experimental results,pedagogical implications are obtained:CBI is more helpful and effective to improve SVS students’English writing achievements and stimulate their English writing interest and increase their writing motivation than the product approach.In the end,the author puts forward some suggestions for the further teaching and study according to the problems appeared in this study.