An Action Research Of Holistic Teaching Of Story Genre Writing In Junior High School

Story genre writing plays a very important role in English teaching in junior high school.At present,there are phenomena such as “teaching and learning are separated” and “students are required to memorize model texts to improve their writing performance” in English writing teaching in junior high school.Students’ compositions have problems such as unclear communicative purposes,unorganized schematic structure and ungrammatical language use.However,there is not yet a mechanism for story genre teaching,and it is only scattered in English writing teaching.Besides,most of the current studies based on English writing teaching are oriented toward high-level learners,thus there is a lack of English teaching studies for primary and secondary schools.Therefore,in this study the author conducts an action research on the teaching of three kinds of story genres,namely,recounts,observations,and narratives,which are the most common stories for junior high school students.So students can finally produce stories with clearer communicative purposes,more organized schematic structure and more grammatical language use.This study can also explore effective ways for junior high school English teachers to teach story genres.The participants of this action research are 48 students in grade seven in the class taught by the author at C Junior High School in Q city.The action research was carried out in three rounds,and a total of 144(3*48)pieces of compositions created by the students were collected to answer the following questions:(1)When teaching English writing based on a holistic teaching of story genre writing,can students master the characteristics of the three story genres of recounts,observations,and narratives? How well did they master the communicative purposes,schematic structure and linguistic features of the three story genres?(2)Does teaching English writing based on a holistic teaching of story genre writing help junior high school students improve their English writing performance of recounts,observations and narratives?The study showed that after three rounds of story genre writing,students were able to master the generic features of recounts,observations and narratives,and produce the correct story genres.However,students’ mastery of the communicative purposes,schematic structure,and linguistic features of the three story genres vary.And there are more problems in the aspect of linguistic features.During the three rounds of action research,the author continued to adjust her teaching design and strategies,and finally students improved their linguistic features and their writing scores.This study also provides several implications for middle school teachers on story genre writing teaching.First,teachers should guide students to focus on the communicative purposes,schematic structure and linguistic features of the texts,especially the use of tenses,adjectives and conjunctions in writing.Secondly,teachers should strengthen the instruction of different genres in their regular teaching.Finally,teachers should use a variety of classroom assessment and work presentation methods,pay attention to the writing situation of students of all levels in the class,and provide one-to-one feedback and guidance when necessary,so as to improve students’ writing ability.