Basic English Writing Skills employed by English Majors

董連棋

Basic English Writing Skills employed by English Majors

董連棋

In Second language Acquisition， writing is an important element. While even for English majors， their performance in English writing is far from satisfaction. Therefore， this study tries to find out specific English writing skills adopted by English majors. A questionnaire was administered to 60 English majors with writing test scores required. Through the data analysis via SPSS， author found the most frequently used English writing skills of English majors are choosing the synonyms or equivalent expressions to replace the words or expressions they are not familiar with and so forth.

Second language Acquisition English writing skills correlation

一、Introduction

English writing ability first of all matters learner’s academic performance which mainly takes the form of all sort of English related examinations. So a good command of English writing will help one stand out as a showcase of a comprehensive command of English skills. Furthermore，writing as an aspect of second language output should be given enough emphasis because of its great function in consolidating the input procedure of one’s second language acquisition. Thus， writing will in return promote the learning process.

二、Methodology

（一）Research Question

What are the most frequently used English writing skills of English majors？

（二）Subjects

The subjects of this study consist of 60 English majors in Northwest Normal University. 30 of them are sophomores coming from English class 1. Another 30 are juniors from English class 1， too. The study was conducted by the end of an academic year when each subject would at least have one-yearlong college English study.

（三） Instruments

Questionnaire and Writing test scores

The researcher designed the questionnaire with the reference to the information from Zhou，（Zhou Ting， 2005）and the main part of the questionnaire is on the base of Oxford's classification of language learning skills. The questionnaire is made up of three parts： instruction， personal information and the use of writing skills. Question items are measured according to the five-scale ranking pattern from 5 （always or almost always true to me） to 1 （never or almost never true to me）.

三、Results

（一） Data collection

60 questionnaires were distributed to 60 English majors. Of all the distributed 60 questionnaires， 50 of them are identified as useful to this study with the rest retaining problems such as the unfinished questions and so on. Thus the data of 50 questionnaires is put into SPSS 19. to analysis.

（二） Analysis

According to the analysis result， there are several most frequently used English writing skills of English majors， which are listed as follows.

（1）Almost all English majors will choose the synonyms or equivalent expressions to replace the words or expressions they do not know or are not familiar with. The percentage of getting more than 3 （sometimes） reached nearly 100 percent.

（2）large majority English majors will consider the inner structure of the passage they are writing and readjust the outlay and structure of his/her composition. The percentage of doing so reached nearly 96 percent as showed clearly in the table below.

（3）In addition， most English majors tend to employ transitional words to enhance the fluency and expressiveness as well as coherence of their writing. The percentage of doing so reached 94 percent according to the data analysis as showed clearly in the table below.

（4）Besides， there are three items related to the writing skills whose frequency of use reached the same 92 percent. They are first of all to make sure the writing is in line with what the requirement is exactly urging. Secondly， the repetition of same words and ways of expression are realized in English majors’ writing. Thirdly， self-encouragement is made possible even the time students receive unsatisfied writing assessment result.

（5）Another highly used writing skill is English majors do take time to do the proofreading on their composition when finished writing.Thus， all of above mentioned skills are frequently used by English majors in their writing practice with accordance to the highest ranking in the collected data.

四、 Conclusion and Further Discussion

The study well serves the initial purposes of this study. First of all， the most frequently used English writing skills of English majors are figured out. According to the data analysis， it is very obvious that those higher score achievers often employ more writing skills compared to those relatively low achievers. High score achievers usually do better in avoiding the repetition of using the same words and expressions， which is the most striking difference between these two groups.

And high score achievers usually do better in writing techniques such as employing more rhetoric expressions to make their writing much more vivid and affective.

However， this study also helps expose some very significant problems in the use of writing skills， which should be contributed to their unsatisfied performance in English writing such as not making for themselves a plan to improve their writing practically. And few of them keep a good habit of reciting and imitating some excellent English works as shown in the chart below.

［1］Ellis， R. Second language Acquisition［M］.上海：上海外語教育出版社，2000.

［2］Perrin，D. Progression analysis （PA）： Investigating writing skills at the workplace［J］.Journal of Pragmatics，2003（35）：907～921.

［3］劉潤清，戴曼純.中國高校外語教學改革現狀與發展策略研究［M］.北京：外語教學與研究出版社. 2003.

（作者單位：西北師范大學外國語學院 ）