The Procedurally Imitating Method:Effects On The Accuracy,Complexity And Fluency Of College English Writing

How is language imitated to help learners learn it quickly and well? In fact,there are only two kinds of foreign language exercises that can combine content creation with language imitation in real teaching and the current situation of teaching research of foreign languages.The first is to talk to native speakers.The second is continuation task.However,through a large number of studies on continuation task,the author finds that there are three problems of it in the following three aspects: first,continuation task is completed in one time,so its promoting effect is limited.Second,in continuation task,there is no interaction between peers and teachers.Third,continuation task is only limited to narrative,because the original text is always a story or narrative articles,and explanation,discussion and other non-narrative style can not be continued.Therefore,the author puts forward the procedurally imitating method,which combines the process writing method with the imitating method,and makes up for the shortcomings of continuation task while exerting its advantages.Accuracy,complexity and fluency are the three basic dimensions to evaluate the composition's language.In this paper,the author formally puts forward the procedurally imitating method,and probes into the influence of the procedurally imitating method on the accuracy,complexity and fluency of college English writing.The research issues of this paper are as follows.1)Can the procedurally imitating method promote English writing accuracy of Chinese students? 2)Can the procedurally imitating method improve the English writing complexity of Chinese students? 3)Can the procedurally imitating method advance English writing fluency of Chinese students?The subjects of this experiment are 90 freshmen of non-English majors from chemical engineering,biological engineering and applied chemistry in China Three Gorges University.They are in three classes of the same English proficiency and taught in the same teaching procedure.Besides that,there is no significant difference of their scores in the last English test(t=.946,p>.05).This experiment lasts 15 weeks,which includes five steps: pre-test,imitating,revising,final draft and post-test.The imitated text(reading material)is My College Life,selected from the Book1 of New Target College English.Before the imitating process,the subjects are asked to write a composition entitled My High School Life as the writing task of pre-test,which is similar to the imitated text in content and expression.After that,the subjects are required to write a composition entitled My College Life.In this writing process,the subjects must imitate the one in Book1 of New Target College English in content and language expression,and this process lasts 13 weeks with several times of revising.Lastly,the subjects are asked to write the composition entitled My High School Life again as the writingtask of post-test.The results of the writing tasks of pre-and post-test are analyzed with SPSS19.0.The experiment's results show that the procedurally imitation method can effectively improve the accuracy,complexity and fluency of the subjects' writing.What's more,there are some findings about it.1.The procedurally imitating method,which is focused on the combination of content creation and language imitation,can highlight language input,motivate language learners to pay more attention to language form,strengthen their attention to them,and make up for the deficiency of the process approach in this respect.2.The combination of content creation and language imitation,which is emphasized by the procedurally imitating method,can optimize language production and promote the absorption and internalization of new knowledge.3.The procedurally imitating method lays stress on repeated revision and evaluation to help students deepen their understanding of language knowledge and improve accuracy of language.4.The writing task using the procedurally imitating method is production exercises at the discourse level,so the contextual information is relatively abundant.5.The procedurally imitating method based on the discourse level provides learners with an opportunity to express their own ideas.Besides,the study offers at least three valuable insights.First,the effectiveness of the procedurally imitating method confirms the theory of language acquisition.Second,the aligning effect of the procedurally imitating method helps us to reunderstand and study language learning strategies in a new perspective.Third,the procedurally imitating method can be applied to language testing.In addition to those above,some suggestions on its application are also put forward.1.Textbooks are needed to be read intensively and reading and writing can be combined.2.The imitating text should be modified many times by students themselves,their teachers and classmates.3.Cooperation and interaction can be enhanced.4.The sense of language is created by reading extensively.5.Interesting reading materials are chosen,which is easy to be imitated.6.Appropriate level of reading material is needed.7.The reading material isn't too short.8.Instruction with the basic requirements of promoting learning is encouraged.9.Emphasis on language alignment should be advocated.10.Correcting and grading for promoting learning are necessary.