【正文】

How to cultivate junior middle school
students' ability of English writing

 

湖北丹江口市浪河镇中心小学 王传香

 

　　The purpose of junior middle school English teaching is to cultivate students’ ability of English listening, speaking, reading and writing  . Teaching practice has proved that writing is a higher demanded ability in the ability of these a few aspects. Throughout the requirements in English writing of our city’s entrence examinations for secondary school in recent years , it can be seen that composition content must be relevant, meaning must be coherent, expression must be clear and complete. These requirements for junior high school students is not an easy thing. Quite a few students often  make mistakes about writing some language repetition, inconsistent  and vague meaning with single sentence to express . Therefore teachers must run through the cultivation of writing ability in the usual teaching. How to effectively develop the students' English writing ability? According to the teaching experience of recent years, the author thinks  teachers are able to implement from the following aspects:
　　A． use in combination with speaking and writing
　　Speaking and writing are mutually connected, in the teaching I often use a combination of writing and speaking, foster and train the students' writing ability. In the class teaching  teachers require students as far as possible to use the words of having learned with the content of course to describe people or things.Let the students make English class become practice class of hearing English, speaking English, reading English and writing English.Make the students immersed in the atmosphere of English .
　　look at the picture to speak, speak and write in combination :
　　Images associated with the class content in teaching should be presented before students by multimedia,and then, according to the pictures , teachers require students to narrative briefly a few coherent picture in English.Then based on the narrative content, students write it out.Through narrative in advance, the student has clear concept for these content in mind , therefore, when writing, as having substance in speech, the use of vocabulary and sentence patterns will continue to pour out.As Britton pointed out “the students’ oral English sentence patterns and expressions often is the foundation of their learning to write.“This form trains both the students’ oral English and the students' writing . It is one of the better ways
　　B. use in combination with reading and writing
　　Reading and writing is the difference between each other, and mutual penetration.Reading focus on comprehension and writing focus on presentation skills.Reading is “input”, writing is a “output”.Students acquire from reading knowledge of language,and often reflect in the writing.Either reading articles or extracurricular reading, will have great influence on students' writing.Because the students' writing first begin with  imitating. Students should be encouraged to read wonderful segment of article for perusal, and apply it in writing.Only by reading and understanding,students can acquire and improve writing ability.English teaching expert Alexander  once said, Nothing should be written before it is read. As a result, while improving reading , various forms of writing exercises should be carried out .So I often use some of the following methods in the actual teaching .
　　1). Conjunct the words into sentences
　　Put the word or phrase together, let the students connect them into a sentence according to the meaning and logic relationship. Such as: is， to， clean and tidy， duty， environment， keep， our， it， our .Connct them into a sentence. The English sentence should be:
　　It is our duty to keep our environment clean and tidy.As another example: in his class， yesterday， any other， than， left， she， the classroom， student， later
　　The English sentence should be: She left the classroom later than any other student in his class yesterday.
　　This kind of practice is helpful for students to lay a basis for writing and cultivate writing ability.
　　2) .sentence consolidation method:
　　According to the content in the teaching content, I often give the students some simple sentences, asking them to learn to write a bit more complicated sentences, and to merge it.Such as: The student was singing./ The student was singing on his way to school./ The student was singing a pop song. The three phrase can be merged into: On his way to school the student was singing a pop song.
　　3).the sentence pattern conversion method:
　　Sometimes different sentence patterns in English can express the same meaning. The more sentence patterns with the same meaning students remember, the more flexible the meaning is. The sentence pattern transformation practice can make students express flexible meaning ,and improve their writing ability. So .in the teaching I often ask the students to express the same meaning with different sentence patterns.Such as:
　　1. It took me two hours to do my homework. And I spent two hours doing my homework.
　　2. He got up early so that he could get the first bus. And He got up early in order to get the first bus.
　　C.Using the method of reciting
　　through the ages, reciting has become our Chinese nation's traditional teaching methods.Reciting can make students more ?exposure to? English, to deepen understanding and accumulate language knowledge, but also learn to express their ideas in native English, get rid of the negative influence of mother tongue, eventually improve English writing ability.
　　D. Using the method of memory writing
　　What is writing from memory ? It is to memorize the article and write the article without looking at it.Actually the most stupid method is the best way.Some classmates can’t pass the exam only because  thet don’t have a right method. After reciting the classical models,then try to write from the memory.Then compare the original to correct error and find out where are the problems.Most of the classmates all make minor mistakes when writing, such as spelling,singular and plural, capital and small letters, etc.This is your weakness in writing, and that is the place that exam markers cannot bear most .Bacon said: “Writing makes an exact man”. You will find yourself which mistakes you often make only through memory writing.
　　E．Use the method of imitative writing
　　(a), copy writing training of basic sentence patterns and dialogue
　　Such as learned the sentence“It is time to go to school”， Teachers can guide students to imitate the following sentences：It is time to get up./It is time to have breakfast./It is time to have an English class. For another example, studied the sentence“My favorite subject is English”， the students can be asked to imitate the following sentences ：My favorite food is dumplings./Ann’s favorite movie is Carfield. After studying the structure of there'll be, in addition to let the students copy writing sentences, the teacher can also encourage students to use there'll be structure to describe my bedroom or classroom, etc.In this way students not only consolidate the knowledge  that they have learnt, but also improve the ability of expression,Then they have laid a solid foundation for future writing.
　　(b). copy writing training about the text of the thinking of writing
　　Students from Grade Seven stand at the starting stage of learning English, when writing ,they should imitate the thinking of writing of the text.In learning the text, the teacher not only let the students copy write sentence patterns, pay attention to stylistic structure, but also guide the student to analyze the thinking of writing of the text. For example, in travelling notes of Unit 10  in the next semester in Grade 7,the thinking of writing and the content is: (1) How was the weather?(2) Where did you go?(3) What did you do?4) How was the people?(5) How did you feel?After the students understand the thinking of writing the above ,they can easily imitate writing a travelling note .
　　(c). the copy writing training of articles of picture describtion
　　In the seventh grade material,the picture and its accompanying essay are both excellent. There are many materials abou picture talk. In addition,in daily life there are many materials talking about the picture. Teacher can make students imitate the model essay writing of the picture describtion . About the copy writing of the article of talking pictures, the key is to illustrate the picture content in a certain order and step,  we tend to use more “general - points - the general” approach.Such as :In Unit 4 Section B of last semester from the seventh grade, first we can introduce simply, “It is Tommy 's room” and its general characteristics, then according to the six tips of where questions ,we can write down the indoor display,  and end with a sentence or two, such as: It is a pleasant room. I like It very much. Finally students  begain to imitate under the guidance of the teacher.All in all, from the seventh grade, we should begin writing training as an important task of English teaching, using the copy writing teaching means, step by step ,from simple to numerous, the students' writing level will have greatly been improved.
　　F.use the way of retelling
　　The purpose of retelling the text is to train students' ability of oral expression.But this is not our final purpose.Our ultimate goal is to turn oral expression ability to English composition, in order to make the students to target to imitate and reference while writing a composition  .Therefore, carefully organizing the text is the key to improve students' ability in composition. How to retell specificly, I generally begin from the three aspects: Mechanical retelling ,
　　Flexibility retelling and creative retelling .
　　In a word, English writing is a comprehensive expression of the English language, and it reflects the usage of the students' English comprehensive ability .In addition to consolidate vocabulary, it also involves the ability of making sentences, grammar knowledge and logic thinking, etc. If Students  want to master this kind of skill, it must take a long time to have a strict training.To encourage and guide at ordinary times, through practice, remembering more, writing and speaking in a planned way, step by step and speaking- practising –criticize-practising with purpose, then preserve and persevere, student’s writing ability will be improved.