How to Improve Students’ Writing Ability

I. Introduction

At present, the purpose of middle school English teaching is to improve students’ skills of listening,

speaking, reading and writing. However, the teachers and the students yield to the examinations, which

result in many problems in English learning, particularly in English writing. The main causes of it are as

follows: (1)Teachers and students think it’s not important to practice writing in junior one and junior two.

They prefer tactics for the examination of entering schools of a higher grade. (2)Writing is not taught

systematically to students, such as how to choose words, make sentences, organize paragraphs,

conceive the whole essay and so on.

Because of the above reasons, some students can’t write English compositions well, and even they

are in dread of writing. Consequently, very few students can use English to express their own ideas

skillfully. In the long run, this causes the vicious circles. So the teachers should attach importance to the

students writing in English teaching. It’s very necessary to give guidance on the students’ writing and it’s

quite important for the students to practice writing more.

II. The relationship of the four skills

Nowadays, English writing becomes more and more important in the middle school English

teaching. English listening, speaking, reading and writing are mutually related to each other and

permeated by each other. Reading and listening are to comprehend others’ ideological expression. It’s a

process from the external language to internal language. Speaking and writing are to express their own

ideas with language. It’s a process from the internal language to external language. So writing ability is

based on the ability of reading and listening. At the same time, the training of writing can go a step

further for the improvement of reading and listening ability. In my opinion, to improve writing ability, it’s

very important to improve other abilities. It’s meaningful for the students to train these four abilities. So

we should penetrate writing in the whole teaching process combining it with reading, listening, speaking

and so on.

III. Methods of improving students’ writing ability

1. Train the ability of listening to improve writing

Choose a suitable listening material for the students. Playing the tape in class, ask them to listen to

it repeatedly after class. Have a dictation in class and check the work to give a mark. Teachers should

keep doing this once a week to improve the ability of writing. In order to improve the ability of listening

and help the students get more information to lay solid foundation in English, we choose New Concept

English as listening materials, this course attempts to practice all the theories into practice about

language. It trains the students’ skills in understanding, speaking, reading and writing. It’s used to train

the students systematically to write English.

2. Centering around the text to improve writing

Now, the text is an excellent material for the student to improve their integrated skills of listening,

speaking, reading and writing. Train the students’ ability through the following ways. (1)Have a dictation

The words are to the article what the bricks are to the building. If you don’t know to write eight

words in a ten- word sentence, you’ll not express your ideas. So vocabulary is very important for the

students’ writing. The vocabulary in the teaching material is selected scientifically. It is very important

and basic vocabulary for the students.

At present, the middle school teaching material is more difficult than before. It has larger vocabulary.

In the reading of each unit, there are a few main words; I will write them on the blackboard. I will read

them and let the students repeat and pay attention to the pronunciation. I use the words to make the

sentences to show the students how to use them.

In each reading, there are many useful expressions and idioms. It’s useful for the students to

underline and remember them. In Oxfam Trail Walker, there are such useful expressions and idioms as

fund-raising event, a 100-kilometre, an excellent chance, team spirit, help people in need, development

projects, an experience you will never forget and so on. It’s meaningful for the students in their own

writing.

(2)Read, recite, and retell the text

In general， for a student, the amount of reading and listening should be over ten times that of

speaking and writing. If the students can manage it, they will express their ideas freely by speaking and

writing.

After finishing a lesson, the author plays the tape in morning class and students listen and repeat.