Action Research On Improving Inland Xinjiang Senior High Class Students’ English Writing Performance

Researchers and scholars have been devoting themselves to studying how to improve students’ writing competence.However,few of them conduct research by means of action research and even fewer fix their attention on students in inland Xinjiang senior high classes.With the expanding of inland Xinjiang senior high classes,an increasing number of students will come to study in inland China.It is a challenge for teachers to help these students make progress in English writing.The action research aims to explore the following two questions:1.What problems restricted the improvement of students’ English writing performance in inland Xinjiang senior high classes?2.How to improve the students’ English writing performance?The author does research on senior three students’ writing through observation,interviews and testings.The problems of their writing feature in spelling mistakes,collocation errors,confusing sentence structures and monotonous sentences.According to their problem s,the author tries to instruct the rules of word formation,the pronunciation of syllables and summarizes students’ spelling mistakes,aiming to improve students’ accuracy in word spelling.Translation of phrases and topic writings are used to reduce the collocation errors.Besides,the author explains the rules of sentence structures,analyzes the sentence errors and guides students to construct grammatical sentences.The author combines imitation,sentence transformation and the instruction of transition words with the purpose of enriching the sentence structures in students’ compositions.The ultimate goal of this research is to cultivate students’ writing competence so as to improve students’ writing scores.On the basis of Krashen’s input hypothesis,Swain’s output hypothesis and Piaget’s constructivism theory,the action research is carried out among senior three students in author’s classes.The author conducts two cycles of action research according to the procedure designed by Kemmis and McTaggart,each following the steps of planning,acting,observing and reflecting.During the process,the author observes the students’ writing performance and grasps students’ opinions through interviews.After the first cycle of action research,the author makes adjustments accordingly.A data analysis between the scores in pretest and post-test is employed to evaluate the effects of the research after the second cycle of research.Through observation,interviews and data analysis,the author draws some conclusions.Firstly,for teachers,the teaching methods of English writing are not targeted for students in inland Xinjiang senior high classes.For students,their lack of solid foundation in English and insufficient input lead to their problems in writing.Secondly,the action research plays a positive role in improving students’ writing performance and writing scores.There are three limitations.Firstly,the research subjects are merely senior three students.Students in other grades do not get involved in the research.What’s more,the research period lasts not long enough.Secondly,there are some other factors that interfere with students’ writing scores.Thirdly,the procedure of action is not interesting enough and the author needs to raise students’ motivation in writing.To sum up,the action research provides inspirations and references about English writing for teachers in inland Xinjiang senior high classes.It is also beneficial to the cultivation of students’ writing competence and promotes the professional development of teachers in inland Xinjiang senior high classes.