Action Research On Improving Junior Students' English Writing By Modeling

The new National English Curriculum Standard for Full-time Compulsory Education(2011)has clear requirements as to junior high school students' writing abilities.Students are supposed to get the writing materials prepared based on the writing requirements and be able to draft,write and revise.This indicates that English writing teaching should emphasize the improvement of students' writing abilities.However,most of the teaching training and practice are still product-oriented,with the focus confined to the writing products,i.e.the writing essays,rather than the writing processes.The concomitant problems emerging from the present teaching model are as follows.At first,students do not have great interest in English writing.Moreover,students do not understand how to carry out a planned and orderly writing process.At last,students' writing products fail to reach the standard.The phenomena are very common in the school where the author teaches.In view of the current situation,with empirical studies on pre-task planning at home and abroad as literature review,Scaffolding Instruction as theoretical framework and action research as research paradigm,the study attempts to apply modeling as pre-task planning in English writing teaching aiming to change the present adverse situation.Specifically,the study is intended to find answers to the following three research questions:1.How does modeling-based pre-task planning affect junior students' English writing processes?2.How does modeling-based pre-task planning affect junior students' English writing products?3.Can modeling facilitate junior students' attitudes towards English writing teaching?The action research lasted for 16 weeks.The participants were 43 Grade Eight students of a natural class from a junior high school in Haizhu District in Guangzhou.The research consists of three steps.The first step is the preparation work.Pre-test,the first self-report and the first video recording of the sampled students were implemented to probe into the students' original state,which could be compared with the results after the research.The second step is the implementation of the first-round writing teaching,i.e.applying modeling as pre-task planning.Then the mid-test and the interview were conducted,which reveals the effects of the first-round research.In the third step,in view of the data analyses of the mid-test and the results of the interview,a Chinese modeling task was added to the pre-task phase in the second-round writing teaching.At last,the post-test,the second self-report and the second video recording were conducted to demonstrate the effects of the new writing teaching.Comparing the three groups of data,we can find that after the implementation of the new writing teaching,i.e.modeling as pre-task planning,the students,especially the intermediate learners and lower-level learners have improved their writing processes.In terms of content,accuracy and coherence,their writing products have also been enhanced with coherence improved most significantly.Moreover,the intermediate learners and lower-level learners have improved their attitudes towards English writing.This indicates that applying modeling as pre-task planning can facilitate the students' English writing.Based on the research findings,the author advises English teachers to implement modeling in pre-task phase to facilitate English writing teaching.