An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Graded Teaching On Senior High School Students’ Performance And Attitude In English Writing

English writing,one of the four integrated language skills for students,plays an important role in high school English teaching.Having no standard answers to offer in this part,high school English teachers tend to belittle it and attach great importance to the other sections such as grammar or reading.Besides,in the teacher-centered teaching mode,the individual difference of the students in English writing can hardly be taken care of.Therefore,it is necessary to find a teaching mode that is effective in dealing with the individual difference among the students.Graded teaching is chosen in this study,which aims to explore its effect on English writing performance and attitude of senior high school students and further track down its impacts on the students of different writing levels.Following the theories of Zone of Proximal Development,Optimization of Teaching Process,and Multiple Intelligence,this study aims to answer the following questions:1.Does graded teaching have impact on the writing performance of senior high school students?If yes,what impact does it have on the students of different English writing levels?2.Does graded teaching have impact on the English writing attitude of senior high school students?If yes,what impact does it have on the students of different English writing levels?A quasi-experiment was conducted in two natural classes in Grade 11 in a senior high school in Yancheng City,Jiangsu province.No significant difference was found in the pretest between the two classes in English writing performance and attitude and Class 5 was chosen as the experimental class,Class 6 the control class.Both classes were taught by the researcher herself.In English writing instruction,Class 5 received graded teaching,while non-graded teaching mode,that is,a usual and traditional mode,was adopted in Class 6.It was guaranteed that no other significant differences existed between the instruction of the two classes.The experimental data were collected through tests,questionnaires and interviews,among which the quantitative data were analyzed with the SPSS.The major findings of the study are as follows:First,compared with the traditional teaching mode,graded teaching can improve the overall English writing performance and attitude.The mean of the post-test in EC is 17.13,higher than that of CC(p=0.000),showing the significant difference of writing performance between EC and CC.In the meanwhile,the mean scores of the post-questionnaire in EC and CC are 44.25 and 35.17 respectively with p value at 0.000,showing that graded teaching significantly improves the students’ writing attitude.Second,graded teaching has different effects on the students of different English writing levels.The level B and level C students have made the greatest progress in both their writing performance and attitude,while the level A students have made the least progress in either of the two aspects.This study offers the following teaching implications:First,teachers should adjust the teaching mode according to the students’ writing performance and ideological trends.Second,teachers can create a positive learning atmosphere to stimulate students’learning motivation.Third,teachers can reduce the polarization in English writing among senior high school students through targeted learning activities.However,there are still some limitations in the study.First,the size of samples analyzed in this study is not large and wide relatively.Second,the researcher herself is a novice teacher without sufficient experience in English teaching.