Blog Four

Blog Four consists of two parts. In part one I’ll talk about the Chinese writing learning and teaching. In part two I’ll talk about the present writing teaching in colleges in China.
Part 1
I used questionnaire as the data collection methods to gather information as the program came to the end. At the beginning I used the Writing Attitude Survey downloaded from the writing-oriented website, which I later thought was not so appropriate to Chinese language learners. This time I gave them five questions to answer. Most students gave positive answers. Writing helps them to recall the characters and to be confident with the ones they know and helps them to realize the ones they need to work on. Some students agree that writing simple passages is a good practice to learn Chinese writing.
A few students gave contradictory answers. They want to learn more about Chinese writing but they don’t like writing simple passages. I said these to them: “There is not shortcut to learn Chinese language. As long as you spend time memorizing the words and phrases and reciting the passages, you can be successful learners.”
Over the course of the past several weeks of Chinese characters’ writing, students now have a vocabulary of 150-200 words. They have begun to write in more complete simple sentences and they have begun to edit their own work.
Most of them do love writing Chinese characters. It’s easy for students to talk about the writing content in the peer conference. When reading they can usually recognize them, but when it come to writing it is hard to remember all the strokes. Students would forget the characters or miss one part of the character. I have introduced some effective ways to them, for example, using flashcards, dividing the characters into different parts and more exposure to the words, etc. Sometimes I asked them to write pinyin (pronunciation) first, then they could think about the characters. However, unlike the English words, the Chinese pronunciation has no direct association to the characters.
When I asked them what type of genre they would like to try, they told me they Some students said they would try diary entries, poems and short stories. My students enjoyed getting familiar with the new words , phrases and simple sentences in simple Chinese songs.
When learning lesson four and Lesson five, I asked students to write two questions “What do you feel like doing at this weekend?” “What would you like to drink?” I let students brainstorm the different activities they would participate at the weekend and different drinks they prefer to drink. Students all have a notebook on which they write some useful expressions and sight words. Students are advised to review what they wrote occasionally.

Conclusions
It is a good practice to provide the writing format to the students because of the students’ unfamiliarity with the language. Actually, it is a kind of prompt. Or it is a kind of graphic organizer with more prompts. Students will be more encouraged and stimulated to write in this way.
Mini-lesson and peer conference are effective too. With the feedback from the teacher and their peers, students should be ready for their final drafts. The transformation of the writer-reader role provides students with the opportunity to judge their writing from the perspective of the audience.

Future implication
Because my students’ vocabulary is not large enough to write different genres, I just ask them to write about themselves, their families and their hobbies. At the present stage, it’s important for them to learn some important sentence patterns. Next semester, they will learn some other genres and students can have more opportunities to write.

Part 2
Let me say something about the present writing teaching approach in China.
After learning English for years, many students often end in failure when required to compose a piece of writing in English. Students complain that they lack ideas and cannot think of anything interesting or significant enough to write.
A characteristic teaching of writing proceeds this way: The teacher first of all teaches students some “skills” or “techniques” for composing, and then assigns a topic for them to write with after class. He corrects grammatical errors in their writing and offers a grade, and occasionally some superficial comments. The teaching of writing is in a sense more form-centered, and little attention is given to most important considerations such as purpose of writing, its audience and the process of writing. Having difficulty in composing, students often feel worried and some even lose heart in writing because they don’t know how to write a composition and they don’t learn writing skills from others, which affects the quality of teaching English writing. In writing, a teacher can neither supervise the students’ actions, nor find the errors in organization and content immediately, nor know the pressure and anxiety involved in writing. This practice seriously hinders the development of writing competence. In the long run it frustrates both English teachers and the vast English learners.
Chinese students write in English but think in Chinese way. It’s common to see the inappropriate sentences written by Chinese students in their writing. Example one: My friend Tony died in a traffic accident. Example Two: I like green color. In the first example, the student is confused about the choice of the word between “die” and “kill”. In the second example, we can see the negative transfer of the Chinese language on English writing.
Actually there are quite a lot negative transfers from the Chinese language. Chinese verbs can be put in constant use in a chronological order, without any change in form or tense. In English, however, one sentence, no matter how long or complex, permits only one predicate verb except the verbs in parallel. Most students are theoretically aware of the rule, but not in real writing.
What’s more, the pressures of the CET (College English Test) and the College English curriculum force English teachers to focus their attention on grammatical rules, linguistic accuracy and students’ final “piece of work” instead of functional language skills. Due to students’ low level proficiency, time constraints and low motivation, writing still remains a rather weak point.
The product approach is always criticized to attach too much importance to the final products than the process approach. More and more EFL teachers in universities or colleges in China are shifting or trying to shift from a product-based approach to a process-focused approach in their teaching of writing as the latter may contribute towards activating students’ thinking and creating ideas for a writing task. However, there are some difficulties why process approach is not efficient and popular in China: first, EFL environment is quite different from ESL environment; second, non-English majors in China are not willing to write on one hand and cannot adapt themselves to the new teaching method on the other hand; third, syllabus for non-English majors in China have not put enough emphasis on writing teaching, which is still examination-oriented and teachers are also not willing to risk performing the new approach in practical teaching.