An Empirical Research On The Effects Of Dictogloss On Students' English Writing Proficiency In Senior High School

With the reform of curriculum,more and more attention is focused on English teaching in senior high school.English writing,as one of productive skills,should be attached more concern.Therefore,many researchers try to adopt some kinds of writing approaches to improve students' writing proficiency.Among these approaches,there is a dictation approach named dictogloss,which is originated from the traditional dictation approach.But its purpose and the specific procedures are different from the traditional one.It is a text-based,task-based and learner-centered approach that can help students to focus on both the meaning and form of language.According to previous researches at home and abroad,dictogloss is an effective approach for foreign language teaching and many researches have proved that this approach can improve students' four language skills.Most of previous researches compare it with traditional English writing teaching approaches and have proved that this approach is appropriate for English writing teaching in senior high school.In addition,many researchers modify the procedures of dictogloss according to teaching needs,that is to say,they put forward different requirements for each stage of dictogloss.And they point out that the stage of reconstruction plays a key role in dictogloss.Therefore,this research applies dictogloss to English writing teaching in senior high school,and in the stage of reconstruction,different requirements are proposed for two teaching classes.The aim is to explore its effects on students' writing process and writing proficiency.There are three research questions:(1)What are characteristics of students' negotiation process among team members and features of students' reconstructed texts in the stage of reconstruction of dictogloss?(2)What influence can dictogloss exert on students' planning,translating andreviewing of writing process?(3)How does dictogloss affect students' writing proficiency?The present research is carried out in Yu She senior high school of Jin Zhong.Research subjects of experiment are students from two parallel classes in Grade Two.And two classes are randomly selected as experimental class and control class.The training of dictogloss to two classes lasts for 15 weeks.And all training is conducted by the same teacher.The only difference is that students in EC are asked to reconstruct texts by reproducing the original texts while students in CC are asked to reconstruct texts in their own words in the stage of reconstruction.Instruments of research include classroom recording,questionnaires and tests.Based on analysis of experiment data,conclusions are summarized as follows:(1)The negotiation processes and reconstructed texts of EC have the following characteristics:Students reproduce texts verbatim and use the vocabulary and sentence patterns in dictogloss texts,but they don't divide texts into several paragraphs when they reconstruct the texts.Besides,there are a few mistakes of spelling and errors of grammar.The negotiation processes and reconstructed texts of CC have the following characteristics: Students arrange the structure of reconstructed texts after confirming the main idea of dictogloss texts and then organize texts in their own words.Students in CC can use various vocabulary to express the same meaning and they can use different sentence patterns such as attributive clauses,appositive clauses and so on in their reconstructed texts.In addition,students in CC can divide texts into several parts when they reconstruct the texts according to their own understanding.Besides,there are more mistakes of spelling and errors of grammar in their texts.(2)In terms of planning before writing,students' mean scores increase in EC,but only planning materials and topics get significant improvement;In terms of translating while writing,students in EC focus on accuracy of sentence structure;In terms of reviewing after writing,students in EC mainly modify mistakes of spelling and errors of grammar,and they tend to modify their compositions according to writing requirements themselves.As for CC,students achieve significant improvement in planning before writing,and they focus on planning materials,topics,content,structure and details of writing;Students' behaviors of translating get improved significantly,and they focus on flexibility of sentence pattern andlexical diversity;Students' habits of reviewing after writing are better than before significantly,and they focus on improving the consistency of composition,modifying the structure,and deleting the unnecessary expressions.Besides,they would like to revise their compositions according to classmates' suggestions.(3)The accuracy of spelling and grammar gets improved significantly after dictogloss in EC.The content,logicality,lexical diversity and complexity of syntactic structure get improved significantly after dictogloss in CC.Combining the results of two classes,the conclusion can be found that students who reconstruct texts by reproducing original texts have a significant progress in accuracy of vocabulary and grammar while students who reconstruct texts in their own words have a significant improvement in content,logicality,lexical diversity and complexity of syntactic structure.Therefore,teachers or other researchers can make different requirements to the reconstruction stage of dictogloss according to the specific teaching requirements and students' learning needs.