[Keywords:] new curriculum, curriculum reform, writing level
First, the problem: the writing status of junior high school graduates is worrying.
In recent two years, Quanzhou junior high school English test questions have been written, which I think is an important step to test students' comprehensive language use ability. Written expression is a very important means of language testing, which can reflect students' communicative competence in expressing, transmitting information and solving practical problems. It will have a positive and far-reaching impact on improving students' quality and promoting quality education. But this is undoubtedly a new challenge for the teachers and students of the graduating class. In the past two years, teachers and students have spent a lot of time and energy on written expression, that is, English writing, with little effect. It has formed a phenomenon that "students are afraid when they see written expressions, and teachers have a headache when they correct written expressions". This phenomenon was also reflected in the written expression questions of the senior high school entrance examination last year (2002). Last year's mid-term exam was: not too complicated school plan. If the students can find a foothold when reviewing the questions and are familiar with be sentence patterns and some positional prepositions, I don't think it should be a problem to get a passing grade. However, the result of the exam was disappointing: many students got 1-2 on this question, and many students with good strength only got 4-5 points. Those who can score 7-8 points are considered "excellent works". This situation is far from our training goal, which not only brings many practical difficulties to the cohesive teaching of senior high school English, but also brings heavy pressure to students' further study and development, which cannot but arouse our junior high school English teachers' great attention.
Second, the analysis of the problem
Why is it so difficult for junior three students to express themselves in writing? I think there are three main reasons:
Before the implementation of the new curriculum, middle school education (especially rural middle schools) was basically exam-oriented education. Examination-oriented education pays too much attention to the explanation and teaching of grammar and vocabulary knowledge, but ignores the cultivation of students' practical language application ability; Exam-oriented education pays attention to students' rote memorization and gets high marks in mechanical training, but ignores the cultivation of students' observation, thinking, imagination and innovative spirit; Examination-oriented education overemphasizes the dominant position of teachers and ignores the dominant position of students, which makes the time and space for students' activities in the classroom unable to be guaranteed by law. In such a student environment, students are deprived of even the most basic freedom of "speaking", not to mention the use of comprehensive language ability. (2) Middle school English education attaches importance to written training, ignores oral practice, emphasizes written test and ignores oral test (even some schools have not listed oral test as an evaluation standard), and the oral foundation is generally weak, which is one of the most important reasons why students' writing ability cannot be improved. Imagine how a person who can't even speak well can be asked to write a good article. (3) Teachers generally ignore the cultivation of students' English writing ability in the first and second years, and after the third year, they only rely on "cramming". This seriously violates the law of gradual progress that must be followed in the writing process.
Third, the opportunity to solve the problem.
A new round of curriculum reform: people-oriented, paying attention to individual development, attaching importance to emotion and implementing quality education. It pays attention to the sustainable development of students and aims at their lifelong learning and development. The National English Curriculum Standard issued by the Ministry of Education puts forward that the task of English curriculum in basic education stage is to stimulate and cultivate students' interest in learning English, so that students can build up confidence, form good study habits and effective learning strategies, and cultivate the spirit of autonomous learning and cooperation. It provides a solid platform for cultivating students' comprehensive language use ability. This comprehensive language use ability certainly includes writing ability.
Fourth, the way to solve the problem
The author worked as an English teacher in grade three two years ago, and he was also bent on "written expression". Although there is a determination to "widen my belt and never regret it" and "make people haggard for Iraq (written expression)", the problem has not been fundamentally solved after all. This school year, I was a teacher in Grade One, and I had the honor to participate in the curriculum reform of Grade One. While insisting on oral English as the breakthrough point, I pay special attention to strengthening the cultivation of students' writing ability. Adhere to the accumulation bit by bit, step by step. I was pleasantly surprised to find that by the end of the first semester, two-thirds of the students in the class had been able to write compositions with fluent sentences and complete structures. This has basically reached the writing level of excellent students in grade three. I'll talk about the specific methods below, and I hope all my colleagues can give me your valuable opinions.
1, adhere to oral (listening and speaking) as the basis.
Any language learning must be based on spoken language, which we can learn from children's mother tongue. The research results of language psychology tell us that beginners generally need a lot of information to be input, understood, absorbed and processed through the internal language system at the initial stage, and then transformed into a certain degree of external language. Generally, primary spoken language is more important than secondary written language, and then gradually increase the input of written language. "Listening and speaking lead, reading and writing keep up" is a law that must be followed in learning any language, and this law must not be violated when cultivating students' writing ability. Britten (1970) pointed out: "Learning the sentence structure and expression of oral English is often the basis for them to learn to write." Tough (1977) not only emphasizes the important relationship between oral expression ability and writing level, but also points out that "teachers must help students improve their oral expression ability while teaching writing, because oral forms often contain a lot of structures and wording similar to written language." In fact, students with strong oral expression skills have higher writing level. Teachers can use the three-minute report of students on duty before class, situational communication in class, English corner after class and English debate to improve students' oral expression ability. Before writing training, you can do oral composition first, which can reduce the difficulty of writing and improve students' interest in writing.
2, from easy to difficult, from shallow to deep, step by step, step by step. The ancients said, "One leap can't take ten steps, and ten steps can't take ten steps." Writing is a "delicate job", and you can't rush to achieve success, let alone encourage others. Only by perseverance and hard work can it be "logical". For freshmen, students' writing ability can be cultivated through various forms, such as connecting words into sentences, making sentences, answering questions after reading the article, filling out forms, looking at pictures, rewriting or abbreviating the text, retelling the text according to the provided vocabulary, imitating writing, etc.
3. Make full use of curriculum resources.
(1) Textbooks are our main curriculum resources, which have provided us with opportunities to train writing since Unit 7 of Grade One. These trainings are very important to improve students' writing ability. We must guide the students to finish it carefully. We should correct and comment on students' homework in time. I often draw students' beautiful and creative sentences with wavy lines and add encouraging comments. Finally, don't forget to show the results: I often post students' excellent exercises on the wall newspaper or study garden. Before the mid-term or the end of the term, I will also compile the excellent works of students into a book, one for everyone. This may be the best gift for students and the most unforgettable emotional experience.
(2) Encourage students to borrow extra-curricular books (such as simple English books), newspapers and magazines from the library frequently, and guide them to watch radio and television programs frequently. I also subscribed to English Weekly for Middle School Students, English Pictorial, English for Middle School Students and other auxiliary learning materials with them, and put these materials in the class bookcase so that students can read them at any time after class. Reading is the basis of writing. The ancients said that "reading books is beneficial", and that "reading thousands of books and writing are like gods" is the truth.
(3) Make full use of network resources: our era has entered the network era, and it is fast and convenient to use the network to find information; At the same time, students can also send emails or e-cards online. In the process of sending e-mail, students constantly modify their ideas to make them clearer and more meaningful. In e-mail writing communication, students' language use ability can be greatly improved.
4. Close to the actual life of students
English Curriculum Standards emphasizes that the content and form of listening, speaking, reading and writing training should be as close as possible to students' real life, their communicative behavior and purposeful comprehensive language use activities. Therefore, when cultivating students' writing ability, we must follow the principle of "applying what we have learned, applying what we have learned, and applying what we have learned". For example, after learning Unit 3, my homework for students is to make a small card about my personal information. I don't strictly limit the format, and students' exercises are really varied: some students don't forget to show their painting skills and draw cute cartons after completing the cards; Next to the card; Some students took Polly with them. They took the following sentence: I am a lovely boy, don't forget me! Some students use computers to make their own scanned photos, and some are from childhood. It looks really funny. And these are students' creative thinking! Facts have proved that writing themes close to students' lives are conducive to stimulating students' interest in writing and cultivating students' attitude of active participation, willingness to explore and diligent study.
5. Cultivate students' habit of thinking in English
In students' written expressions, we find that Chinglish is the most representative mistake. This is not only because students' oral English is not good, but also because mother tongue habits have a great negative transfer effect on foreign language learning. Why can normal children master a language quickly? Because he uses that language for thinking activities, he has been practicing and practicing thinking activities in that language since he started babbling. Beyakoyev, a foreign language teaching psychologist in the former Soviet Union, pointed out the fundamental principle of psycholinguistics: the process of mastering a foreign language is the process of learning to think in a foreign language, that is, mastering the means and ability to form and express ideas in a foreign language. So how to cultivate students' habit of thinking in English in the teaching process?
(1) Try to organize teaching and communicate in English in class.
(2) Introduce the cultural background, customs and habits of English-speaking countries to students regularly to help them understand the differences between the world and Chinese and Western cultures.
(3) Consciously remembering some fixed usages, doing some Chinese-English translation exercises regularly, and paying attention to multiple translations of one sentence are of great help to improve students' ability to use the language flexibly.
Here, perhaps Marx's advice on learning a foreign language is very inspiring to all English learners:
When a person is learning a foreign language, he should not always translate everything into his own language. He must be able to use a foreign language and completely forget his mother tongue.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) matters needing attention
When cultivating students' writing ability, we should pay attention to the following points:
1, listening, speaking, reading and writing are closely related. We must never neglect the cultivation of students' other abilities because of cultivating their writing ability. Generally speaking, listening, speaking and reading are more important than writing in the first few years.
2. Cultivating students' writing ability should not take up a lot of their time, or even affect their all-round development. Bacon once said: "History lessons make people wise, poetry makes people wise, mathematics makes people careful, natural history makes people profound, logic and rhetoric make people eloquent, and all they have learned become character." This famous saying tells us that any subject is a part of students' basic quality; No subject is the whole of a student. As English teachers, we should jump out of the limitations of English subjects. We should not only consider the all-round development of students with English expertise, but also consider the all-round development of students without English expertise.
In short, there are various ways to cultivate students' writing ability on the platform of curriculum reform. As long as we train students purposefully and in a planned way, their writing ability will be gradually improved.