互动教学法在英语写作教学中的应用研究

论文总字数：36189字

摘 要

本文回顾了国内外互动方法的研究成果。本文结合中学英语写作的新要求，分析了中学英语写作的现状和存在的问题。本文采用课堂试验对照的方法，对中学生英语写作教学中的互动教学方法进行了研究。本文主要研究三个问题：1、在中学英语写作教学中采用互动教学法是否可行？2、互动教学法能否激发学生的兴趣，增强他们对中学英语写作学习的信心？3、与传统教学模式相比，互动教学法能否更快地提高中学生的英语写作能力？

通过实验研究，将互动教学法应用于中学英语写作教学是可行的，与传统的教学模式相比，互动教学法能更好地激发学生的兴趣，增强他们对中学英语写作的信心；而且互动教学法能更快地提高学生的英语写作能力，体现在语言组织能力和使用能力的提高上。

关键词：中学英语写作教学；互动教学法；传统教学模式

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review………………………..….……………………………1

2.1 The study of Wilga M.Rivers…………………………………………..…...2

2.2 Other previous Studies of English Writing Teaching and Learning….3

1. Theories and principlesfor Interactive Approach ….…………….…...5

3.1 Definition of Interactive Approach…………………...……….………..5

3.2 The theoretical basis of Interactive Approach.………………….……........5

3.3 The Principles of the Interactive Approach………..........................….…...6

1. Application……………………………………………………..……….7

4.1 Study questions，subjects and instruments………………….…………..….7

4.2 The Procedures of Implementation of Interactive Approach in English Writing Classroom……………………………………………….…….....8

4.3 Implications…………………..………………………………………..12

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..10

5.1 Major findings…..…..…………….…………………………………..10

5.2 Limitations………………….…...……………………………………..12

5.3 Suggestions for further study………………………………………13

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...14

1. Introduction

For many years, middle school English teaching in China has always attached their importance to declarative knowledge and neglected procedural knowledge. The teacher-centered model is the basic model of English teaching at middle schools, which not only violates the constructivism theory, but also reverses the subject’s status of teaching and learning, to some certain extent. Besides that, teacher-centered model also affects students’ learning initiative. Therefore, advocating Interactive Approach is one of the most important ways to change the present situation of middle school English teaching.

Middle school English teaching is not systematic and perfect, writing teaching is arranged in the integrated English class after learning the reading passage. If time is limited, teachers may not teach the part of writing in class. Students will practice English writing by themselves after class. But most students are rather weak in English writing, including the vocabulary, grammar, syntax and discourse. It is difficult for students to complete writing task in time. So in view of the present situation to English writing teaching at middle schools, it is very necessary and great significant to study the application of Interactive Approach to English writing teaching at middle schools.

In many middle schools of China, English writing has been the weakest part in English learning. While students" listening and reading skills have been improved year by year according to the results of annual middle school Entrance Examination, the improvements of their writing abilities are not obvious. During the writing teaching, teachers adopted interactive teaching to stimulate students" interest which could make students pay more attention to practical writing and promote students" writing ability step by step.

The thesis contains five parts.Chapter One is a brief introduction of the study background.Chapter Two provides the previous studies of Interactive Approach and English writing at home and abroad . Chapter Three introduces the definition of Interactive Approach and provides the theoretical basis of Interactive Approach. Chapter Four is application.Chapter Five draws a conclusion.

2. Literature Review

At present, in the western countries, many researchers put Interactive Approach into teaching practice. Through Interactive Approach, the modem teaching model --- the learner-centered has been more and more popular in English writing teaching. So there are some studies on Interactive Approach abroad.

2.1 The study of Wilga M.Rivers

Harvard University Professor Wilga M. Rivers thinks language teaching is a process of interactive activity: the function of teachers is to create opportunity and environment of using language effectively and freely, Interactive Approach should regard students as the center of teaching process? not teachers as the center. Rivers in Interactive Language Teaching (2000),from the cognitive psychology angle, analyzes and emphasizes the interest"s fundamental role during the two-way interactive activity. Rivers believes that the information feedback will naturally produce if listeners are interested in conversation content. If listeners are not interested in content, the conversation will only become a form, and there will be no communication information. Therefore, in foreign language teaching, teachers should motivate and keep students actively participating in interactive activity. From the beginning of language learning, classroom should be interactive. Students in interactive classroom will accumulate the language by listening to or reading authentic language materials, or even by the language output of other students in the discussion section. Students can absorb all useful information into their own knowledge. They can use the language what have learned or gained indirectly. In this way students can know the characteristics of language in the authentic context. Rivers thinks that Interactive Approach is a process of information communication between teachers and students. Through communication, teachers and students try to express their ideas and thoughts freely among each other. This approach can produce the reciprocal effect between two or more students. In the process of communicating, Interactive Approach is actually that one student has put idea to another student. More students will gain more ideas from each other in language learning. The language environment is very important for students to receive more comprehensible knowledge and then think out more new and creative ideas. Interactive activities required students to participate in the whole process of teaching process.

The study of Brown：In 1994,H.D.Brown of the University of San Francisco language put forward in the book Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy the new ideas and new paths of second language teaching according to cognitive psychology, education psychology, social psychology, linguistics, psychological linguistics and social linguistics and other subjects. One of the most prominent achievements is the twelve principles from the learner angle, including automatic, intrinsic motivation, strategic investment, risk-taking, the language-culture connection, Interlingua and communicative competence in his book. These principles form the theoretical basis of interactive teaching and break the traditional model of teacher-centered in class. Brown emphasizes student-centered in language learning, and embodies the importance of the subjective.

2.2Previous Studies of English Writing Teaching and Learning.

In studies on English writing teaching abroad，in the past thirty years, foreign writing theories have got great development from the Product Approach to Process Approach and Genre Approach and to Interactive Approach in writing. Krasper came up with nonjudgmental response model for teachers to encourage students to express their own points of views freely. Students will transfer their writing progress from teachers to English language learning. This mode required teachers to adopt the personalized teaching methods which can inspire students to improve their writing ability in English writing teaching. So Brown in his book Teaching by Principles: an Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy came up with Interactive Approach, which had great significance in English writing teaching. From the above researches on English writing teaching abroad, the author found that the standards of new curriculum so as to better meet the learners" writing requirements and enhance writing ability in real context.

In studies on English writing teaching at home，the traditional writing teaching mainly used Product Approach, focused on the traditional teaching skills and product as the center. In the process of students" writing skills training, teachers attached their importance to observing and reading the results of their writing, but teachers ignored the facts of how to cultivate and improve students, writing ability in real context. Ye Sining stated that writing is not one way learning. Writing involves various skills in the learning process. Process Approach can improve students writing ability, but it is difficult to design teaching activities because of the individual"s different characteristics. Process Approach no longer focused on grammar, text structure but on the materials, drafts and revising. In the writing teaching, Process Approach stressed the cognitive process of writing. But there were some deficiencies to Process Approach. So some scholars started to explore the genre-based approach. Xu Xiaoyan states that Genre Approach can make students learn the knowledge and learn writing skills better in the writing process. Genre Approach believes that English writing teaching is the first step to help students enhance the understanding of the structures and language features so as to improve students’ genre awareness, which is somewhat similar to Product Approach. The two approaches focuses on language use ability. The difference of Genre Approach is based on various social contexts, and this approach emphasizes the understanding of semantic framework about different genres. At present, Interactive Approach is the main tendency English writing teaching.

In studies on English writing learning abroad，Interactive Approach is popular with students in foreign countries in language classroom. So students in foreign countries tend to learn language in the form of interactive activities. In their classrooms, teachers design various questions to guide students to learn language by stimulating their inspirations, and students have a positive attitude towards this approach. In the process of teaching, students have more creative ideas about the topics. So students in the foreign countries have broad horizons and different views about something from different angles. According to the studies of foreign countries, students have great interest in English writing and form a good habit for English writing based on the Interactive Approach.

In studies on English writing learning at home，the traditional teaching is teacher-centered that teachers impart knowledge to students, and students just passively accept vocabularies usages, grammar rules and results analysis. This method is time-consuming, low-efficient, and no language communication in learning process. Teachers and students are lack of enough communication, which results in the weakness of language application in the practical context. Sun Lei proposed that writing is one of the difficult problems in improving language use ability. She analyzed the present condition of English writing, and pointed out that students should communicate with each other and exchanged ideas when writing (2011). Deng Jun states that students are scared to face English writing (2002). Hao Ruiying had a study on current situation, and gave some suggestions to solve the problems in English writing. So Product Approach affected students" writing for a long time. Teachers always emphasized the spelling of words and grammar rules but ignored the facts of how to layout the whole discourse.

3. Theories and principles for Interactive Approach

3.1 Definition of Interactive Approach

After several decades of research on teaching and learning languages, we have discovered that the best way to learn to interact is through interaction itself. Brown (2001:159) defines the concept of interaction as follows:“Interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other. Theories of communicative competence emphasize the importance of interaction as human beings use language in various contexts to ‘negotiate’ meaning, or simply stated, to get one idea out of your head and into the head of another person and vice versa.”Interactive Approach is a kind of teaching and learning method based on information and affective communication between teachers and learners. This approach requires teachers and students to actively participate in the teaching process or express the interesting information among each other, and teacher should act as an organizer who organizes the classroom activities or a designer who designs the learning tasks in the teaching process. Teachers should try to solve the problems for students in the interactive activities. Students improve their language use ability through autonomous learning, cooperative learning and exploratory learning. The basic objective is to change teacher-centered model into the student-centered model which can embody the principal status of students. Students can fully play a part in their subjective in the classroom. Meanwhile Interactive Approach can promote students overall and harmonious development by active communication and interacting with teachers and students in language learning.

3.2 The theoretical basis of Interactive Approach

This part provides the theoretical basis of Interactive Approach, including Social Constructivism Theory, Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, Swain’ Output Hypothesis, Communicative Competence Theory and Long"s Interaction Modification. These theories provide good theoretical basis for guiding Interactive Approach in English writing. Social Constructivism Theory makes students construct meaningful activities which can learn new knowledge. Meanwhile in the learning process, teachers should provide more comprehensible language for students to construct the meaningful activities in the teaching classroom. When students receive more comprehensible language, they can have more language output in the written English. Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis are very beneficial to guide English writing process to apply the Interactive Approach. Furthermore, there are more interactive activities in interactive classroom for English writing. Finally, when students finish their compositions in English, students need to correct and modify their writing among students. Long’ Interaction Modification pointed out that modification can improve the quality of the written works and gradually reduce the errors in the English writing practice.

3.3 The Principles of the Interactive Approach

Teaching principle is a general theory and standard in teaching process which is based on the teaching objects, objective rules and teaching practice experiences with the purpose to effectively carry out teaching activities. A set of standards needs to correspond to teaching principle and strictly tries to put these standards into practice. In this way teachers can break through and surpass the limitations of traditional teaching model and change the present cognition about the Interactive Approach and put this approach into dynamic teaching practice so as to realize the objectives of the Interactive Approach. To apply Interactive Approach effectively into the classroom teaching, it is necessary to discuss the principles of the Interactive Approach. There are five principles for Interactive Approach.

It includes subjective principle，autonomy principle，cooperative principle，strategy training principle，motivation principle and evaluation principle. Subjective principle refers to fully respecting the subjective status of students in the learning process, and encourages students to actively participate in interactive activities in classroom with the purpose to develop students’ self-learning abilities, initiative abilities and creative abilities. Students can learn knowledge as the active constructors, not as passive acceptors. Autonomy principle attaches importance to the individuality, personality and potential ability of students in the teaching process on the basis of the time and space of students’ autonomous learning, and gradually cultivates students" responsibility for their own learning. Interactive Approach desalinates teachers’ teaching, but strengthens students" learning. This approach puts forward the higher requirements of students" autonomous learning. The cooperative principle is to show the cooperative development of students’ individuality through group work which is helpful to promote the complement of the teaching objective. Cooperative learning not only cultivates students" adaptability that promotes the development of students" subjective, but also constructs the meaningful activities. Strategy training principle refers to use the strategy training throughout the whole teaching process, students can gradually form their own learning methods, which can accurately comprehend language, express ideas and take active methods to make up some errors in the process of interactive activities. The motivation principle refers to arouse the students’ enthusiasm to participate in activities by using the effective motivation mechanism. What’s more, this principle can satisfy students with their desires and psychological needs while students participate in the activities, motivation principle make students keep an active attitude towards learning. Therefore, this is a kind of active construction. Evaluation principle combines summative assessment with formative assessment to promote the overall development. Interactive Approach emphasizes students’ positive participation in learning process. Only by summative assessment can not give comprehensive and objective evaluation. Teachers should use formative assessment to learn about students" psychologies, learning difficulties and learning feelings, which can adjust learning process and improve the efficiency.

4. Application

4.1 Study questions，subjects and instruments.

The designed experiment to English writing teaching at middle schools aims to answer the following questions:1. Is it feasible to apply Interactive Approach in English writing teaching? 2. Compared with traditional teaching model, can Interactive Approach stimulate students’ interest and enhance their confidence to English writing learning? 3. Compared with traditional teaching model, can Interactive Approach improve students’ English writing ability more quickly? The subjects of the experiment are chosen from 72 freshmen from the new district NO.1 middle school of Suzhou. Class one was taken as the experiment class and Class two was the control class. During the experiment process, there are two 45-minute lessons of English writing of each week. Both classes were taught by the same teacher on the same day, the same textbook was adopted in the experimental study. Before the experiment, two classes of students who have the same English level were chosen to participate in the experiment. In order to compare the students" interest about English writing in the experiment class and the control class respectively, the author employed the questionnaire before the pre-test and interview after the pre-test. For Class One, the students learned English writing through Interactive Approach, such as classroom interaction. For Class two, students practiced English writing with the traditional teaching model.

4.2 The Procedures of Implementation of Interactive Approach in English Writing Classroom.

Step 1 Preparation

In this part, teachers asked students to select some useful expressions and phrases and write them out .these expressions and phrases can help students express accurately, what’s more, it is necessary preparation for post writing.

Step 2 Group work

This step requires students (one group for four students) to discuss how to learn English well? Teachers should solve the background knowledge of this topic, and allow talking about the key points, these questions will help students.

Do you like English? Why or why not?

Do you like English? Why or why not?

Do you think it is easy to learn English well?

What is the greatest difficulty in your English study?

What do you think is the most efficient way of learning English?

What do you want your teacher to do to help you improve your performance?

Step 3 Presentation

After the discussion, each group chooses one person to read the key points of this topic. In the process of presentation, students from other groups are allowed to give suggestions, and this presentation group should fully listen to the views. Teachers need to make some supplements, especially whether the contents are suitable for the topic or not, and whether there are some typical mistakes of the sentences expression or not. Students are required to put forward the ideas of how to revise. Finally, the group which brings up some creative ideas should be praised. In class, teachers should encourage students to change the sentence expressions and pay more attention to the cohesion while writing.

Step 4 Writing the Outline

Each group has four students (one writer, one speaker, two helpers) to search the information related with this topic, including the topic sentence, related key points and essential sentence patterns. At last, the writer of each group writes their own outline. Students need to finish it within five minutes. And then the speaker of each group read their own outline. In the process, students can assess which group writes well and where it goes.

Step 5 Structure Analysis

This step employs the form of collecting and absorbing all useful ideas to let students review the writing framework of the text, and learn how many parts can the text divide into and learn about the general idea of each paragraph and the relationship among each paragraph. At this time, students have known the general structure of argumentative essays: introduction, main body, and conclusion. In order to broaden students thinking, teachers can make students learn the expressions and phrases in the text, ask students to analyze sentence patterns in the context. Meanwhile, let students think how to write the part: main body.

Step 6 Draft Writing

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