A Study On The Application Of "Draw-to-Feel-to-Write" Teaching Model For Picture Writing In Junior Middle School

Writing is an important part in English learning,and it is also the measurement of English abilities as many English tests use the form of writing to check the learners’ English levels.Most studies at home and abroad on writing focus on the methods instead of analysis of different presentations of materials,they often focus on writing results or the vocabulary and grammatical knowledge,neglecting the guidance of writing process and the development of students’ abilities of experiencing and thinking.Moreover,most studies are done theoretically instead of doing experiments,and there is little research about different presentations of writing tasks.As one form of writing,picture writing makes learners feel more difficult to write,especially to students in junior middle schools.This paper solves the problem by setting up a specific teaching model called “Draw-to-Feel-to-Write”,and then tests its effectiveness by doing the experiment.Students learn to write an article based on pictures by drawing and feeling.During the process,they need to connect pictures to personal real experiences.The experiment is done in Grade Three,Class Five and Class Six in Nanjing Tangshan Junior Middle School which lasts for one semester.The results demonstrate that:First,Students have some problems in picture writing.(1)They have difficulties in understanding the picture or pictures.(2)They feel hard to enrich the contents of the article without words tips.(3)They often make mistakes in the tenses and types of writing.Second,there are not many targeting teaching methods for picture writing.And the traditional teaching way has limited the students’ ideas and reduced their interest in picture writing and increased their writing anxiety.At last,after one-semester practice in class,participants have known some basic knowledge on the teaching model“Draw-to-Feel-to-Write” based on the experiential writing during one semester.Students can grasp an effective method to do picture writing.Their abilities of picture-reading and thinking are improved.Students become more active and imaginative.The significance of the study lies in that it investigates a teaching model based onexperiential learning theory,and tests the effectiveness through experiment,which has more practical value for writing teaching.At the end of the paper,it also puts forward some suggestions for future study and the limitations of this research.