The Principle Of Cognitive Reference Point And The Teaching Of College English Writing

Writing, as one of the most important skills in foreign language learning, is anindispensable and important part in English Foreign Language teaching, and also ispaid much attention to by domestic and foreign scholars. A review of the studies onforeign language writing at home and abroad, shows that their discussions are mainlyfrom the perspectives of transfer, writing strategies, cohesive devices, thematicprogression, which have produced certain fruits, but still remain some shortcomings.In recent20years, with the development and application of Cognitive Linguistics(shortened as CL) in the field of foreign language teaching, many domestic andforeign scholars are trying to explain foreign language teaching by making use ofsome related theories such as the Prototype Theory, the Metaphor View, Figure andGround and so on. But few scholars have discussed foreign language writing fromthe perspective of the Principle of Cognitive Reference Point (shortened as CRP), letalone empirical studies.In view of the inadequate researches of the former studies, this thesis conductsan empirical study in the framework of CRP based on the background of CL, totestify whether CRP has effects on college English writing. The author selects90juniors of non-English majors from Sichuan International Studies University as thesubjects. Firstly they are asked to do the exercise of CET-6, which is regarded aspre-test. Based on the scores they achieve in the exercise, they are supposed to fallinto3groups including advanced, intermediate and pre-intermediate group. Secondlythey are required to write a composition based on their understanding of the pictureprovided within45minutes. Then their works will be collected for further analysisby SPSS16.0. Finally, the thesis discusses the following two research questionsgrounded on data collection:(1) Whether is coherence of essays related to the author’s choice of referencepoint? (2) Whether is the students’ language proficiency in direct proportion to theirability of CRP?The result shows that essay coherence is related to the author’s choice ofreference point; additionally, the students’ language proficiency is in directproportion to their ability of CRP. The author hereby puts forward some suggestionsabout teaching of English writing in the hope of promoting its reform and improvingits efficiency.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the researchobjectives, research rationale, methodology of the study and the layout of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review of the relevant studies at home and abroad. Theauthor goes on with the value and necessity of this study grounded on the formers’achievements and shortcomings. Chapter Three proceeds with the theoreticaldiscussion. This chapter briefly refers to the tenets of CL, and then focuses on CRPas well as an analysis of a case. Chapter Four mainly describes the methodology ofthe study, including research questions, research design and method. Chapter Fivecollects the experiment data and analyses the research results. Chapter Six draws aconclusion to the study, briefly discussing the major findings, pedagogicalimplications and the limitations of the study as well as the questions to be furtherexplored.