An Empirical Study Of English Summary Writing Based On 4P Writing Training In A Senior High School

In the process of the new matriculation examination reform,summary writing begins to appear in some matriculation examination papers.Summary writing is a writing activity and writing evaluation method integrating reading and writing,which can not only assess and promote students’ language knowledge,but also cultivate students’ thinking quality.Since 2014,the pioneer provinces implementing the new matriculation examination – Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province,first begin to adopt the test item of “summary writing”.Although summary writing is not included in the national matriculation examination paper(1)used by Yunnan province,all the high schools in Yunnan begin to use new English textbooks since September 2020.The use of new textbooks means that it is a trend to evaluate students’ summary writing ability in matriculation examination in the near future.However,students who study in the school where the author works are not quite familiar with summary writing,and they are lack of interest in writing and are facing a lot of problems in writing.In the process of teaching,the author finds that schema theory plays a very important role in language learning,and it is particularly useful in helping and promoting students’ summary writing.This study,therefore,tries to explore the impact of 4P(purpose,points,paraphrase,polish)summary writing training on senior three students’ summary writing abilities based on schema theory.The specific research questions are as follows:1.Does 4P summary writing training have an impact on senior three students’ summary writing ability? If so,what is the specific impact?2.Does 4P summary writing training based on different reading text genres result in any differences in the overall summary writing ability and each of the 4P abilities(purpose,points,paraphrase,polish)?In order to answer the two questions,the author conducts a four-month empirical study in Class 3,Grade 3 in a senior high school,Yunnan Province.The research tools of this study include pretest and posttest papers,a questionnaire and an interview outline.In order to get a general picture of the influence of 4P summary writing training on three different text genres(text with charts and graphics;expository and argumentatives;narration),both a pretest and a posttest are done.From September 2021,three times of 4P summary training are conducted in each month,and a total of twelve times of 4P summary training are done in the whole empirical study.Each month,first “text with charts and graphics” summary writing is trained,and then “expository and argumentatives”,and finally “narration” type.Therefore there are 4 times of “text with charts and graphics” summary writing training,4 times of “expository and argumentatives” summary writing training,and4 times of “narration” summary writing training.In order to get an in-depth understanding of the effect of 4P summary writing training on students’ summary writing abilities,after finishing all the summary writing training,a questionnaire survey involving 56 students from science class is made.And nine students are interviewed to better and more objectively understand the effectiveness of 4P summary writing training.The interviews are done to be complement to questionnaire investigation.Through the analysis of data obtained from pretest and posttest,the analysis of questionnaire investigation data and interview information,the following conclusions are drawn:The results of data analysis of pretest and posttest show that after 4P summary writing training students make improvement in terms of their summary writing score and in “purpose,points,paraphrase,polish” respectively in all the three text types,indicating 4P summary writing training can significantly improve students’ summary writing abilities.The data analysis of the questionnaire shows that after 4P summary writing training,the students can better extract the main idea and the key points of paragraphs and articles and paraphrase the original words and phrases,but do not improve a lot in terms of paraphrasing the original sentences in texts.The training has positive effect on polishing the summary text,but the key points of the texts still can’t be reasonably laid out.The data analysis results of the questionnaire are basically consistent with those of the pretest and posttest data analysis,both of which can prove that 4P summary writing training can improve students’ summary writing ability.The interview results show that 4P summary writing training can not only improve the 4P summary writing ability of senior three students,but also promote the development of students’ reading comprehension ability.In addition,respondents mentioned that narrative summary writing is relatively difficult,which is also consistent with the results of pretest and posttest data analysis.Based on the findings of this study,the author puts forward the following suggestions: First,summary writing practice should be involved in normal teaching activities,so as to improve students’ comprehensive language ability and promote the development of students’ thinking ability.Secondly,teachers should pay attention to the analysis of reading texts in the teaching process,including analyzing the structures and logical words of texts,and the layout of the key points.Third,encourage students to revise their compositions more often.In the process of repeated revisions,their comprehensive language application ability is improved.Finally,because content schema,language schema and formal schema have great influence on writing,students are encouraged to read,observe,accumulate and think more in their spare time.