英语论文How to Teach Writing in Senior High School under New Curriculum Criterion.pdf

毕业论文（设计） 1 how to teach writing in senior high school under new curriculum criterion 1. introduction.1 2. existing problems of english writing teaching.3 2.1 problems in teaching program and methods.3 2.2 problems in studentsenglish writing.4 3. on the rules of writing.5 3.1 definition of writing.5 3.2 the nature of writing.6 3.3 process of writing.8 4. on scaffolding theory of english writing teaching.11 4.1 theories of writing teaching.11 4.1.1 the zone of proximal development. 11 4.1.2 scaffolding theory. 13 4.2 relationship between scaffolding and zpd.15 5. scaffolding theory-based writing teaching.17 5.1 learning supports.17 5.2 steps of organizing an english writing lesson.18 5.3awriting teaching example on the basis of scaffolding theory.23 6.advantages of scaffolding theory-based writing.25 6.1 helping students have peer review.26 6.2 helping students learn from each other.26 6.3 helping students know each other better.27 6.4 helping students improve their oral english.27 6.5 helping teachers save time and energy. 28 6.6 helping improve writing assessments.28 7. conclusion.29 references.30 毕业论文（设计） 2 1. introduction writing is a primary way that individuals can communicate with others, telling others what they think and express their emotions, thoughts, hopes, dreams and opinions through writing. according to erika lindermama (1987: 11), writing is a process of communication that uses a conventional graphic system to convey a message to a reader. teaching writing can be enormously rewarding and valuable because using written english is a form of power. with the development of society and economy, english teaching at senior high schools must be reformed. in accordance with the reforming of basic education, english curriculum for senior high schools calls for reformation, which led to the issue of the new english curriculum standards in 2001. and the new reformation of english teaching in english curriculum standards (ministry of education, 2003) requires different bands of english levels at different stages. and students are required to reach the three bands of objectives, from band six to band eight. concerning writing skill, for senior high school graduates, the band-8 objective requires that the students should be able to retell the passages or write summaries according to the texts read, be able to write paragraphs or reports based on the words or diagrams given, be able to write paragraphs with coherent discourses and good structures, be able to write accounts of events or express ideas and attitudes clearly, and be able to compose fluently with standard formats. the new english curriculum standards defines writing as composition in its true sense and designs a higher objective for english teaching, which is highlighted in 毕业论文（设计） 3 the requirement for the ability of writing or composition. so as a teacher, we should pay special attention to english writing teaching to meet the need of this instruction reformation. 2. existing problems of english writing teaching 2.1 problems in teaching program and methods traditionally, middle school students dont have to take any composition courses and few teachers have been received any systematical writing teaching program. leaving ten or twenty minutes for written exercises and assigning a certain amount of written homework have become a convention in teaching english writing. most of the teachers just teach writing in the intensive reading classes, without sparing any special time for the purpose of instructing writing. after students hand in their compositions, the teacher only reads the compositions and points out the errors then returns the graded papers to students, either hoping that they will study the corrections in order to eliminate those in students writing-the obvious mistakes in spelling, punctuation from their writing in future, or requiring them to correct their own errors and to hand in the paper for a final check on the grammatical accuracy. generally speaking, what most teachers focus on are the accuracy of vocabulary and grammar and structures while they are grading or commenting on studentspapers. few of them pay particular attention to coherence or clarity. and a great many of teachers seldom write 毕业论文（设计） 4 comments on the studentspapers. they just give students a mark or a grade. of course there are some difficulties for teachers to teach english writing. the difficulty in writing teaching is how to correct students papers. error correction is an important part of teaching. in most of senior high school, teachers are required to correct all of the students homework because of examine-oriented system. they must spend a lot of time to grade or correct the students homework. however, that is not the only problem. as is know to all, one of the features of chinese education is that middle schools usually have large class size with a total of more than 60 students in a class. an english teacher is usually in charge of two classes and some even have three classes. thus, it often takes hours for a teacher to correct students written exercises and it takes even days to correct the composition of a class of more than sixty. this task has become a burden or even a fear to middle school english teachers, so quite a number of teachers are afraid of assigning the students writing task and have to reduce the writing, which affecting the efficiency of composition teaching. 2.2 problems in students english writing students problems in english writing can mirror some inadequacies of english writing teaching in the middle schools. as brown observes, motivation is probably the most often used catchall term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task (charles, 1984: 116). however, although english is a required subject in china, quite a number of students dont show much interest in it, especially in english writing. they even have a fear for it. for many senior high school students, writing is more of an obstacle than 毕业论文（设计） 5 an opportunity. apart from the purpose to continue their study at college, many of them do not think they need to spend so much time and energy learning to write, for they cannot see the direct use of it. as writing seems difficult and threatening and also dull, they just take it reluctantly, even with fear. for most of them, the only motivation for writing is to pass exams or to finish the tasks assigned by their teachers. as a result, teachers find it hard to motivate their students. there is no doubt that low motivation accounts for studentsfailure to learn english, especially english writing. another problem is that middle school students are lacking sustained practice of writing because they dont have any english writing course at school. general speaking, they dont write without exams. their draft papers are reduced to about five or six in one term, which is far from enough compared to the exercises on other skills like reading and listening. the most serious problem with students is that most of the senior students fail to have a good command of english composition. we all know that practice makes perfect, so how can we ask the students to produce good products without sufficient practice? 3. on the rules of writing 3.1 definition of writing the writing term “writing” may have at least two meanings. one is the act of writing. the other is the more generally recognized meaning: to express ideas and 毕业论文（设计） 6 opinions by use of written words sentences. “writing which involves composing” (grabe interview them before and after writing to determine how they dealt with particular aspects of a writing task; or have writers verbalize some of the decisions they are making as they write; examine their journal accounts of their writing process. several models of writing processes have been achieved. murray (1980) distinguishes three stages in writing: rehearsing, drafting and revising. rehearsing, or prewriting, includes finding a topic; finding ideas about the topic, thinking about the topic; letting ideas interact, develop, and organize themselves; and thinking about the audience and the purpose of the writing task. drafting refers to getting ideas onto paper in rough form revising involves checking what have been written and making deletions or additions as necessary. murrays 毕业论文（设计） 9 model is criticized by many researchers for looking writing process as three linear and independent stages. for example, revising can occur at any time in the composing process. flower and hayes (1980) study the writing process with the “think-aloud” protocol. this activity requires writers to say aloud as much as possible of what they thought while performing a writing task. protocols obtained from skilled writers make it evident that, although there is obviously a structure to the composing process, it does not correspond to the traditional picture of collecting material, organizing it, writing it out and then revising it. those procedures all occur, but not in such a linear manner. flower and hayes (1980) define three major processes of writing as planning, translating and reviewing. the planning process involves generating, organizing and goal-setting subprocesses. the heart of planning is generating ideas, most of which are ideas for what to write. some of the generated ideas, however, are ideas for goals to be pursued, and these are stored for consultation throughout the composing process. the translating process involves producing actual text corresponding to information in the writers memory. the function of the reviewing process, consisting of reading and editing subprocesses, is to improve the quality of the text produced by the translating process. the most striking strength of this model lies in its claim to account for the amazing diversity of mental event during composition on the basis of a relatively small number of such subprocesses (scardamalia it is a “yesterday of development”. on the other hand, the zpd includes all the functions and activities that a child or a learner can perform only with the assistance of someone else. the level of assisted performance indicates what a person can achieve in the near future, what is developing or potential 毕业论文（设计） 13 level. it is called “tomorrow of development”. in this scaffolding process, the person providing non-intrusive intervention could be an adult (parent, teacher, caretaker, language instructor) or another peer who has already mastered that particular function. vygotsky (1978: 86) elaborates it by describing how a teacher or a more advanced peer might provide an explanation to enable a child to attain a higher level of achievement with support. accordingly, instruction is only useful when it moves ahead of a childs development and provides activities that enable the child to rise above himself but are not beyond his capability. a students zpd is defined as the students range of ability with and without assistance from a teacher or a more capable peer. on one end of the range is the students ability level without assistance. on the other end of the range is the students ability level with assistance. so as a teacher, he/she should try his/her best to stimulate the students potential development, or we can say its the teachers duty to do so and help the students to make full use of their potentialities. but how can a teacher do to prompt the students potential development? what techniques can be used to ensure the transformation of assisted performance into independent performance? thats what we are going to discuss nextscaffolding theory. 4.1.2 scaffolding theory before we discuss the relationship between scaffolding and zpd, lets acquaint ourselves with the definition of scaffolding. the term scaffolding comes from the works of wood, bruner and ross (1976), which is used to describe the way the adult or more capable peer guides the learner through the zone of proximal development. 毕业论文（设计） 14 this will often involve joint problem solving, with the adult-peer gradually withdrawing support as the learners mastery of a given task increases. originally a scaffold is a nomenclature in architecture. its a temporary framework that supports a building during construction. when the structure is firm enough to stand on its own, the scaffold will be removed. in an educational sense, scaffolding, in the form of coaching or modeling, supports students as they develop new skills or learn new concepts. when the student achieves competence, the support is removed. the student continues to develop the skills or knowledge on his or her own. so what kind of scaffolding will decide how student will develop. vygotsky identifies four phases of instructional scaffolding. the first phase is modeling, with verbal commentary. the second phase is student imitation of the skill theyve seen modeled by their instructor, including the commentary. during this phase, the instructor must constantly assess student understandings and offer frequent assistance and feedback. the third phase is the period when the instructor begins to remove her scaffolding. she offers progressively less assistance and feedback to her students as they begin to master new content and/or process. in phase four, the students have achieved an expert level of mastery. they can perform the new task without any help from their instructor. the term scaffolding was developed as a metaphor to describe the type of assistance offered by a teacher or more knowledgeable peer to support learning. in the process of scaffolding, the teacher helps the student master a task or concept that the student is initially unable to grasp independently. of great importance is allowing the 毕业论文（设计） 15 student to complete as much of the task as possible without any assistance. the teacher only attempts to help the student with tasks that are just beyond his current capability. students errors are expected, but with teacher feedback and prompting, the student is able to achieve the task or goal. when the student takes responsibility for or masters the task, the teacher begins the process of “fading”, or the gradual removal of the scaffolding, which allows the student to work independently. now lets look at another explanation of scaffolding. “scaffolding”, winnips explained to education world, “focuses on active learning and student choice. the technique works especially well with technology-based learning, in which students need to be more self-reliant. scaffolding allows them to work self-reliantly while receiving adequate support.” (net. 1) this is the final goal of instruction: teaching for not teaching. instructional scaffolding is a teaching strategy that was cleverly named for the practical resemblance it bears to the physical scaffolds used on construction sites. the strategy consists of teaching new skills by engaging students cooperatively in tasks that would be too difficult for them to complete on their own. the instructor initially provides extensive instructional support, or scaffolding, to continually assist the students in building their understanding of new content and process. once the students internalize the content and/or process, they assume full responsibility for controlling the progress of a given task. the temporary scaffolding provided by the instructor is removed to reveal the impressive permanent structure of student understanding. the purposes of scaffolds are making the task accessible, supporting 毕业论文（设计） 16 the development of expertise (explicit/intrinsic), providing information and advice, encouraging reflection, self-evaluation, and self-regulation, helping students to measure the progress and understanding, and helping students to make decision, explore, and to be constructive. 4.2 relationship between scaffolding and zpd the zpd characteristic of transfer of respons