An Empirical Study On The Cultivation Of Audience Awareness In English Letter Writing In Senior High School

Writing is an important part in English teaching.However,most teachers hold the idea that the teaching of basic knowledge such as vocabulary,sentence patterns and grammar is the most important part in improving students’ writing competence and they attach little importance to the teaching of writing skills.The researcher is trying to seek some effective means to improve the current situation of English writing teaching in senior high school with the adoption of audience awareness in it.This research aims to answer the following questions: Can the cultivation of student writers’ audience awareness in English letter writing in senior high school improve their English writing competence? Does the cultivation of audience awareness have positive effects on each component of students’ writing competence? Does the cultivation of audience awareness have positive effects on all kinds of students’ English writing competence? Does the experiment have positive effects on students’ level of audience awareness in each stage of their writing practice?From September 11,2017 to January 12,2018,the research lasted four months.Firstly,a questionnaire on audience awareness and an English writing test were conducted with the purpose of getting a general knowledge about students’ audience awareness level and English writing competence before the experiment.Then,as no significant difference can be found between the two classes,the experiment was carried out.The researcher took students in Lvliang Senior High School,Lvliang City,Shanxi Province as research subjects and they were from two parallel classes of Grade one.Audience awareness was especially stressed in the teaching of writing in experimental class while in control class,the teacher had no special emphasis on it.Taught by the same teacher,the two classes had English writing practice once in two weeks and the teaching materials for both of them were the same.Data collected before and after the experiment was analyzed by SPSS 17.0 to test the effectiveness of the cultivation of audience awareness in writing.In addition,an interview was carried out in five students chosen randomly from EC to further prove the effectiveness of the writing teaching in the experimental class.Major findings of this research are as follows: First,the cultivation of students ’ audience awareness in senior high school in English letter writing can effectively improve their English writing competence,but its influence on each component of writing competence is different.The cultivation of audience awareness can improve students ’ abilities in choosing the content,arranging the organization and managing mechanics,but its effects on students ’ abilities in vocabulary and language use is not obvious.Second,its influence on students ’ English writing competence also varies from students in different levels.The English writing competence of students’ in high-score group can be greatly improved after the cultivation of audience awareness while the cultivation of it has little effectiveness in improving the English writing competence of students in low-score group.Third,the experiment has positive effects on students’ level of audience awareness in each stage of their writing practice.What’s more,greater progress can be made in students’ level of audience awareness in before-writing and while-writing stage.Although there are many limitations in this research,it plays an important role in promoting the study of audience awareness in the teaching of English writing and the thesis also provides some pedagogical suggestions for further studies of the cultivation of audience awareness.