Contributions Of Formulaic Sequence Teaching To Senior High School Students’ English Writing

Words and grammar are emphasized in traditional Englishteaching, while the research in sociolinguistics and applied linguisticsshows that words and grammar on their own can not fully reach a goodlanguage communication. Formulaic sequences, a bond of form andfunction, feature the combination of grammar, semantics and context.They can increase the fluency of the communication when used andthis merit has drawn more attention from the researchers. Teaching offormulaic sequences in the meantime becomes a central topic amongmore language teachers.However, there isn’t enough empirical research, especially theresearch on English writing of the students in senior high schools in China.During many years of high school English teaching experience，theresearcher feels students have great problems in writing. They donthave a large enough vocabulary. They are weak in organizing articlesand their compositions lack the expression of authentic, vivid targetlanguage. Therefore, it’s extremely important to improve students’writing by using the formulaic approach.To write the thesis, the author carried out an experiment whichinvolved100students of Senior2coming from two classes in DingshuSenior High School of Jiangsu Yixing，and there are50students in eachclass. The two classes were designated randomly as one experimentalgroup (EG) and one control group (CG). In this experiment, the controlgroup was taught with the traditional teaching method throughout thewhole semester. At the same time，a formulaic approach was appliedto the experimental group. Before and after the experiment，all thestudents took two tests on writing and the writer had interviews with thestudents from EG. The writer had an analysis of the writing scores of thestudents and the number of the formulaic sequences adopted in their writing and drew a conclusion from the result of the interviews.It has been proved from the experiment that compared with thecontrol group, the experiment group made greater achievements intheir English writing scores and the use of formulaic sequences. Owingto the increase in the awareness of formulaic sequences among EG,their ability to use formulaic sequences, as well as the writing speed andthe language fluency has improved. And so have the accuracy andidiomaticy of target language. It can be concluded from theinterviews that the formulaic approach helps to develop the students’confidence in writing in English.The thesis bears out the validity of teaching formulaic sequenceson learners’ English writing competence. From the researcher’s point ofview, it’s effective and feasible to improve the senior high schoolstudents’ writing by adopting the formulaic sequence approach.