A Study on the Application of Brainstorming to English Writing Teaching in Junior Middle Schools

Abstract：Writing is seen as the embodiment of the comprehensive ability in English learning， also is the key and difficult point for English teaching. However， the quality composition has long been a beautiful vision for many English learners， especially for the junior middle school students whose language foundations are relatively weaker. It is very popular to see that teachers focus only on the results of writing class in secondary education. This teaching method only pay attention to the composition itself， leading to a depressing atmosphere in English writing classroom， neglecting students subjective initiative in writing， thusly， resulting in generations of students who are short of writing motivation and interest or have no idea on how to begin writing and have great difficulty in improvement of English writing.

In aim of improving this situation， helping students make progress in English writing， optimizing the teaching process， increasing the efficiency of writing teaching， this author attempts to apply the strategy of brainstorming to English writing teaching in WenShang junior middle school with 84 students in this exploratory research. The purpose of this study is to test the feasibility and validity of applying the strategy of brainstorming to English writing class in junior high school. First of all， the author summarizes the present English teaching situation in junior high school in China and the existing researches on application of brainstorming at home and abroad in the First and Second Chapters. The Third Chapter clarifies this experimental design including hypotheses， subjects and methodology. The author apply the strategy of brainstorming to the experimental class with 42 students in English writing in WenShang Experimental Junior School， while the other class， the control group， is taught by the same teacher with traditional ways of teaching. This author collect data from two classes before and after a three-month-long experiment. In Chapter Five， data form the experimental teaching is analyzed by SPSS20.0 which reveals that the average score of students in the experimental class， 14.0235 is much higher than that of control group， 11.4762 and the difference of post tests between two classes is Sig. = 0.000（< 0.005）. At the same time， students in the experimental class have more interest and better performance in writing strategy. In conclusion， it is reliable that application of the strategy of brainstorming to English writing class junior middle school helps students improve their writing capability

Key words： the strategy of brainstorming? junior middle school students? English writing teaching

Introduction

Under the background of English teaching in China， English writing is an important indicator to measure a learners comprehensive ability in applying English. However， the author found that there are certain difficulties for most English learners in writing whose compositions are often under the standard for writing in the Syllabus during all education periods. Whats worse， most English beginners in China， especially junior middle school students who are firstly asked to write in English with rigid learning background， are afraid of these exercises.they cant seize the key points of information in writing English composition and they cant express themselves clearly and accurately in a finished work. In this paper， the author will focus on all kinds of obstacles in junior middle school students English learning improvement， try to apply the approach and some related research methods of brainstorming learning to English writing class in junior high school， to put forward corresponding strategies for better English writing for teachers and students in China.

III. Research Design

3.1 Research Hypothesis

This thesis aims at exploring the way to apply brainstorming in English writing teaching in junior middle school. The hypotheses are：

1） brainstorming indeed play an important role in improving junior high students English writing level.

2） English teachers can instruct students to finish writing with the knowledge of brainstorming and the students will develop a relatively exact and logical thinking pattern to improve their performance in English writing.

3.2 Research Subjects

The subjects are 84 senior English majors from two classes in? They are divided into two groups： Empirical Group （hereafter shortened EG） and Control Group （hereafter shortened CG）. Both the EG and CG have 42 students.

3.3 Methodology

The empirical teaching is carried out based on brainstorming. It starts with a systematic introduction of the brainstorming to subjects in EG. brainstorming a process for developing creative solutions to problems. It can help to come up with new ideas. And makes the process of generation of new ideas easier .It is all described as a tool that works by concentrating on a problem， and then deliberately coming up with as many solutions as possible and by pushing the ideas as far as possible.

During the empirical teaching， the teacher gives the subjects in EG a detailed introduction of related theory and application of the strategy of brainstorming in writing class. The subjects are supposed to know the definition， classification， functions and plans for this three-month-long empirical teaching. According to logic in English writing， this author divides the whole procedure of brainstorming into five steps.step 1 Imagine freely，step 2 Group Discussion ，step 3 Informal Presentation，step 4. Classification，step 5. Analysis & Suggestions

IV. Data Analysis

4.1 Comparison of Students Writing Performance in Pre-test

The author employs brainstorming of junior high school English writing class as the test papers. Before the empirical teaching， the conditions of the EG and CG are almost equal. The Mean and Standard Deviation are calculated for the EG and CG respectively and the performance of the two groups are compared with a T-test. The results are presented in the following tables. Students writing proficiency can be examined from the mean scores of the two groups.

4.2 Comparison of Students Writing Performance in Post-test

Firstly， we can see from Table 4.3 that the mean score in post-test of the EG is 14.0238 which is higher than that of the control—11.4762. This illiterates that there exists a difference between these two groups performance in writing performance. Whats more， according to Table 4.4， we can get that this difference is statistically significant. Table 4.4 tells us the rate of significant difference is 0.000 which is smaller that the rate of the most possibility occurrence of an event （0.005）. That is to say， the EG outperforms the CG significantly.

V. Conclusion

5.1 Major Findings

Students both in EG and CG have problems in English writing due to their ignorance of cohesive devices of text before the empirical teaching. After the training， subjects in EG get comparatively higher scores in writing. The result of this empirical teaching indicates the feasibility of applying the strategy of brainstorming junior high English writing teaching. Students develop a relatively exact and logical thinking pattern and improve their performance in writing with the help of teachers instruction of brainstorming.

References

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作者簡介：肖萌（1995-），女，漢族，山東省濟寧市人，單位：江西師范科技大學學科教學英語專業，研究方向：學科教學英語