An Action Research On English Teacher's Use Of Motivational Writing Strategies To Develop Students' Personal Writing Contents In Senior High Schools

English writing is one of the most important tools of international communication.The academic quality level 2 of the revised National English Curriculum Standards of Senior High Schools in 2017 puts forward specific requirements for students' writing ability when they take the college entrance examination.But in actual English teaching,the phenomenon that high school students don't want to write or can't write is quite common.As a senior high school English teacher,the author is eager to change this phenomenon and improve the effectiveness of English writing teaching through practical exploration.Therefore,from the perspective of developing students' personal writing contents,this study aims to conduct an action research on English teacher's use of motivational writing strategies and tries to offer suggestions for the design of English writing lessons that can stimulate students' English writing motivation,so as to provide an empirical basis and experience reference for the implementation of the revised curriculum standards.The research includes the following steps.First,before the action research,the author analyzed the development space of personal writing contents of the writing materials in English textbooks(Book 4-5,2006 FLTRP version),investigated the situation of the original teacher's use of motivational writing strategies as well as the development of students' personal writing contents in the action class and made an action research plan;second,the author carried out and evaluated the action research plan;third,through the action research,the author clarified the design ideas and proposed tentative suggestions for writing teaching to promote the development of students' personal writing contents.Through the leading research,the author discovered the followings.First,although the writing teaching materials in English textbooks provided opportunities for teachers to develop students' personal contents,the writing activities needed to be redesigned;second,the original English teacher in the action research class lacked awareness to help students develop their personal writing contents and rarely used motivational writing strategies;third,the students had low English writing motivation and their writings lacked of meaningful contents.After three months of two-round action research,through analyzing students' writing contents and questionnaires,the author found that the action research on English teacher's useof motivational writing strategies to develop students' personal writing contents in senior high schools had a relatively positive impact on students.Students were able to define the reader and purpose of writing,chose their own writing contents according to their personal life experience and interests,and thought about and expressed their personal writing contents.By selecting,self-editing and guiding students to read materials before writing,organizing students to discuss in groups and sharing their personal writing contents with the whole class,drafting writing outline,trying to write the main paragraphs,as well as adopting formative assessment aimed at writing contents after writing and other motivational writing strategies,the author encouraged and guided students to actively develop their personal writing contents and enhanced their writing motivation as a result.However,students still had difficulties in improving their writing contents and there was no obvious change in students' understanding of writing value.This was due to the teacher's unskilled use of motivational writing strategies(such as the setting of communicative writing tasks and the guiding of students' discussion and improvement of their writing contents),teacher's non-detailed,non-inspiring questions and non-flexible uses of questioning strategies and so on.Despite the above problems,through the action research,the author has clarified the design of English writing teaching based on developing students' personal writing contents.In addition,the author has a deeper understanding of the development of students' personal writing contents,the use of motivational writing strategies and teacher action research.