Reconstruction

Writing in English is becoming increasingly important throughout the world, for more and more people need to write in English for occupational or educational purposes. Although English writing skill has received more and more attention in Chinese college education, students’achievement in writing is not always satisfactory. Researches related to teaching methods for English writing were enormous and examined various approaches in the literature. However, few studies concentrated on the application of the reconstruction approach to the teaching of writing, let alone to the teaching of English writing to Chinese college students. The present study, therefore, was intended to explore the effect of applying the reconstruction approach to teaching English writing to Chinese college students.Seventy-nine college students (second-year non-English majors) from 2 intact classes participated in the study. One class was randomly selected as the control class, receiving non-reconstruction teaching approach (the generally-practiced approach) and 34 students from this class were selected as subjects to form the control group. In contrast, the other class served as the experimental class, taught with the reconstruction-based approach. Similarly,34 students from the experimental class were selected as subjects to form the experimental group. All the other conditions were equal between the 2 groups, e.g., the same teacher, teaching material and length of class time, etc.Data were collected from 2 English writing tests:the pre-test and post-test. The 2 writing tests were scored later by 3 MA candidates majoring in applied linguistics. Then the statistic procedures of 2-related-samples non-parametric test, k-related-samples non-parametric test and independent-samples t test were employed to analyze the data.The results showed that the reconstruction approach was significantly more effective than the generally-practiced teaching approach, not only in improving the Chinese-speaking college students’English writing proficiency in general, but also in improving their language idiomaticity, complexity and accuracy.The findings of the study have important pedagogical implications for the teaching of English writing in Chinese college. They may carry insights into the designing and implementation of the reconstruction approach in Chinese college English writing class, which may in turn better improve learners’English writing proficiency.