A Study On The Application Of Differentiated Homework To English Writing In Junior High School

As one of the five most important competences in English learning,writing has always been the research focus at home and abroad.However,most scholars are mainly committed to exploring writing teaching strategies,and put forward numerous methods and strategies,ignoring the important role of homework in improving students’ writing ability.Actually,a lot of problems exist in English homework design,especially for writing in junior high school.Teachers tend to adopt the traditional “one-size-fits-all”assignment mode,ignoring individual differences between students,so that it is unable to meet the learning needs of different-level students.Therefore,this study applies differentiated homework to writing homework to explore its effectiveness in improving students’ writing ability in junior high school.On the basis of combining the research results of differentiated homework made by domestic and foreign scholars,this study was carried out in Class 8,Grade 7 of a junior high school in Chengdu.43 students in this class were chosen as the research subjects.Under the guidance of the zone of proximal development and mastery learning theory,differentiated homework has been applied to writing homework for three months through differentiation in teaching objectives,students,homework,and evaluation.The students were categorized into A,B or C levels based on their writing abilities.Students at different levels were assigned with differentiated homework of different difficulty and types.Then,the teacher gave different feedback to different-level students to encourage or praise them.Test,questionnaire,interview were the main research tools to explore the following two questions（1）What effects does differentiated homework have on different-level students’ English writing competence in terms of writing complexity,fluency and accuracy?（2）What changes does differentiated homework bring to students’ attitude towards homework and writing?The research results imply that the implementation of differentiated homework in junior English writing is helpful to improve different-level students’ writing competence,among them,level B students make the greatest enhancement in writing complexity,accuracy and fluency.At the same time,differentiated homework is also beneficial to changing students’ attitude towards homework and writing.Differentiated homework improves the matching degree between homework and students’ ability,changing their attitudes towards homework,improving their confidence in writing,and stimulating their enthusiasm for and interest in writing to a certain degree.This study aims to arouse teachers’ attention to differentiated homework,and provide some implications for the future design of differentiated homework.Also,there are some limits in this study,such as how to further improve the rationality and effectiveness of differentiated homework design,which calls for further exploring.