Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Writing is an important component in learning a language. It can improvestudents’ language proficiency. Writing is a complex process that demands greatmastery of vocabulary, grammar and other basic knowledge of the language. Thus, towrite well and effectively is really challenging for students.The importance of English as an international language and a communicativetool has been recognized by Chinese. As a result, English writing as a part of Englishcompetence is also of much importance. As far as senior high school students areconcerned, English writing is one of the language competences they need to improve.They have the urgent need to improve their writing so that they can be morecompetitive in the College Entrance Examination. Therefore, ways need exploring tomake students’ English writing proficiency better.Free writing and controlled writing are two different modes of writing. Freewriting gives more attention to students’ autonomy and freedom, as far as how toexpress themselves on a specific topic. While controlled writing provides studentswith lots of contents and forms, such as, outlines to complete, models to follow, orpassages to continue. Both the two modes are supposed to have their different effects.Nevertheless, the similarity and difference of the effects of the two need a furtherinvestigation. Then English teachers can be enlightened and know how to apply freewriting and controlled writing in their own teaching and what effect they can expectto achieve.

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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research

Although a lot of researches abroad and at home have studied the role of nativelanguage free writing and controlled writing, there are few studies focusing on theapplication of free writing and controlled writing in English writing classroom forChinese students, not to mention comparative studies.Under the circumstance, this study intends to find out what the effects of freewriting and controlled writing on senior high school students’ English writingproficiency are and then compare the effects. Moreover, of the two writing modes,which one can bring a better effect to what level of students as far as their Englishproficiency is concerned? Undoubtedly, this needs investigating by this study. Thenthe research results and findings can enrich the English teachers in high school tochoose better and more appropriate writing mode to cater to individual students toachieve the best teaching effect. In the research high school students are chosen assubjects, for they have a better foundation linguistically and non-linguistically,compared with the middle and primary school students. By way of pre-and post-tests,interview and work samples analysis the author will examine closely what thesimilarity and difference of the effects of these two writing modes are.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Foundation

This part contains two theories to support this thesis: Swain’s comprehensibleoutput hypothesis and constructivist theory, including trivial constructivism and socialconstructivism. Swain (2005) argues that output, in terms of its name, is not the end ofproduction, but a process in which language learning happens. Therefore, output, if itis paid more attention to, can also contribute to the language learning.Swain’s output hypothesis relies on the information processing theory. Its mainidea is that learning language is just like learning other things. Moreover, it hasrequirements on human mind’s mental processing ability (MacLaughlin,1996).Krashen (1982) attached more importance to language acquisition and unconsciousprocessing. While Swain placed more emphasis on language learning and consciousprocessing.Swain had done a research on immersion students. In that research, subjectswere supplied with enough comprehensible input of second language, but the resultsshowed their second language performance was not enhanced. Therefore, shepresented the experiment results as follow: first, the subjects lacked opportunities topractice; second, there was no push on the subjects to produce output (Swain, 1985).

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2.2 Writing and English Writing

As we know, writing is so important not only for one to learn a foreign languagebut also for one to learn his own native language. Actually, for us Chinese, theunderstanding of writing based on our native language is the foundation for us to learnto write well in EnglishDeng Zhiyong (2008) held that writing was embodied with communicative,interactive, persuasive characters and should be appropriate to the context where thewriting occurred.First, writing can be described as the act of forming symbols. These symbolsare graphic ones people use when they write. The symbols are letters or combinationof letters related to the sound people make when they speak. On the other hand,writing also can be said to be the process of transforming. As Neufeld (1985) said,“writing is a visual expression of ideas. Writing is the process of taking an idea fromone’s head and putting it in a code in order that it can be shared with others”.It is widely recognized that writing is one of the main four skills in languagelearning. The other three skills generally refer to listening, speaking, and reading.Speaking and writing are defined as active and productive skills. The fact is thatactive and productive skills can demonstrate learners’ language competence. Andwriting is a more complex process because when we actually write, in fact, what weproduce is not just a word, or one sentence or even a number of unrelated sentences,but a logical combination of sentences, such as a text, a coherent passage—a sequenceof sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together.

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Chapter 3 Research Methodology .......26

3.1 Research Questions ......28

3.2 Research Subjects.........28

3.3 Research Instruments ....29

3.3.1 Tests .......30

3.3.2 Interview ......31

3.3.3 Writing Samples Collection .......31

3.4 Research Procedures .....32

3.5 Data Collection and Analysis....31

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion .......34

4.1 The Results .......34

4.2 Discussion ........52

Chapter 5 Conclusion .........61

5.1 Major Findings........61

5.2 Pedagogical Implications ....63

5.3 Limitations of the Study......65

5.4 Suggestions for the Future Research ....66

Chapter 4 Results and Discussion

4.1 The Results

The pre-test was taken by all the subjects from Experimental Class One andExperimental Class Two, so that the writing proficiency of all the students can beinvestigated. After the 3-month either free English writing training or controlledEnglish writing training, the post-test was used to find out the similarity anddifference between the effects of free writing and controlled writing on senior highschool students’ English writing proficiency.The writing topic of the pre-test and post-test was the same. The reason is thatthe variation of difficulty can be avoided when comparing the influence of twowriting practices on students’ writing proficiency. The topic (see Appendix A) wasselected according to the principles of the English subject of College EntranceExamination. As the subjects will soon attend the 2014 College Entrance Examination,the topic was closely related to their present conditions. Thus, they are familiar to thetopic. The full score of the test was 25 and the passing score was 15.

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Conclusion

This study intends to explore the similarity and difference between the effectsof free writing and controlled writing on students’ writing proficiency Tests,interviews and the collected samples of students’ writing are employed as the researchinstruments in order to answer the research questions.After three months of applying free writing and controlled writing in seniorhigh school subjects’ writing classes, both the quantitative and qualitative resultsdemonstrate a positive teaching effect of free writing and controlled writing.Firstly, both free writing and controlled writing have a positive effect on seniorhigh school students’ English writing proficiency. These two writing modes can bothimprove students’ English writing in the aspects of vocabulary, language use(grammar, sentence patterns), content and organization (writing ideas).Secondly, according to the results of the paired-samples T tests of pre-test andpost-test of high-leveled subjects and the independent-samples T tests of high-leveledstudents from Experimental Class One and Experimental Class Two, there is asignificant difference between pre-test scores and post-test scores of high-leveledstudents of Experimental Class One. After the free writing practice, high leveledsubjects not only get more scores and improve themselves in English writing, but alsothink highly of the effects of free writing practice taken this semester. The finding liesin that free writing has a positive and significant effect on high-leveled subjects’English writing proficiency.

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Reference (omitted)