A Study Of The Effects Of Narrow Reading Training On English Practical Writing Of Senior High School Students In The Rural Area

Writing,an important skill of language output,has gotten more and more attention.The Ordinary Senior High School Curriculum Standards(2017)puts forward higher requirements for senior high school students’ English writing ability.The writing scores in NMET examinations of Guangdong are also increased and practical writing is indispensably tested in NMET examination.However,the teaching condition of English writing in senior high schools in China is far from satisfactory,especially in rural areas.Most of the students there are weak in writing or even keep it blank in examinations.It is necessary to explore a new and appropriate writing teaching model to improve rural senior high school students’ writing ability.In this thesis,the author tried to apply narrow reading training to practical writing to lower the difficulty in writing by carrying out narrow reading input and output training,which can be finally summarized as the following steps: schema input,consolidation,discussion before writing,first draft,appreciation of model essay and evaluation.These activities purposefully constructed the formal schema,linguistic schema and structure schema of the same topic or genre for the students in the experimental class.This study was aimed to explore the following two questions:(1)What are the effects of the writing teaching model based on narrow reading training on students’ attitude toward practical writing in rural areas?(2)What are the effects of the writing teaching model based on narrow reading training on students’ practical writing ability in rural areas?The author conducted a 16-week experiment taking 108 rural senior high school students from two parallel classes of Grade Three in Shantou City,Guangdong Province,as the research subjects.Two questionnaires and tests in the two classes were used respectively before and after the experiment,and an interview after the experiment in the experimental class as well.The author collected and analyzed the data with the intention of testing the effort of narrow reading training on rural students’ practical writing ability.The research showed that: firstly,students have held a positive attitude towards practical writing after the experiment and have enhanced their interests and confidence in practical writing.Secondly,their practical writing ability has been improved in different aspects,such as language,structure and content and an obvious increase in writing achievement.Hence,it is verified that the new writing teaching model of combing narrow reading training with practical writing is effective in improving students’ practical writing ability in the rural senior high school.This study has a certain theoretical and practical significance and some shortcomings are also pointed out to offer the other researchers some hints for further research in this area.