The Study on CET-4 Writing and Writing Teaching Strategies Based on the Survey of CET-4 Writing Marking Teachers

Nan fang College of Sun Yat-sen University,Guangzhou,China Email:guanyue8011@126.com

[Abstract]This paper is to study CET-4 writing and writing teaching strategies based on the survey of 64 front-line teachers who mark CET-4 writing part.It is found that the students’CET-4 writing level is unsatisfactory.There are many problems,such as sentence expressions,grammatical structures,context coherence and so on.This paper puts forward some teaching strategies and suggestions for CET-4 writing,which is expected to play a guiding role in students’CET-4 writing.

[Keywords]College English;CET-4 writing;teaching strategies

Introduction

The national College English Test 4 marking in the southern part of China was held in South China University of Technology for 9 days in July 2015.After 9 days of hard work,college English teachers from universities in Guangzhou and Guangxi province successfully completed the correction of more than 400 thousand CET-4 papers.Based on the experience of marking writing part,a questionnaire was designed for CET-4 writing marking teachers.A total of 70 questionnaires were issued and 64 valid questionnaires were received.Teachers marking the CET-4 writing part found that students have many problems in the writing part.From primary school to high school,Chinese students have been learning English for nearly 10 years,but there is still a long way to go to improve English sentence expression and English thinking model.During the period of marking,there are many mistakes in spellings and usages,which also show that students have quite a few problems in English learning.A series of questions are worthy of thinking.How to improve CET-4 writing? What are the main problems in students’CET-4 writing part? What do teachers think about the writing level of students?As college English teachers,what measures should be taken to improve students’English writing?These questions are going to be discussed in this paper.

Methods and procedures

Research objects

In this study,research objects are teachers marking CET-4 writing part in South China University of Technology in July 2015.All the teachers who participated in the marking CET-4 writing part are front-line English teachers with abundant experience of teaching and marking from colleges and universities in Guangxi and Guangdong province respectively.

Research questions

In order to understand the current situation of CET-4 writing part,the questionnaire is mainly conducted from seven aspects:what do you think the main problems of students’CET-4 writing part(listed in the order of importance)?What do you focus on when marking CET-4 writing?According to the situation of CET-4 writing part,how to improve students’writing ability in teaching(listed with a multiple choice question)? Judging from the grading of CET-4 writing part,what do you think of the students’writing level?What is the most important part of writing when you mark writing part?There are two fill-in-the-blank questions,that is,how many seconds do you take to mark student's CET-4 writing part?what is the average score when you mark CET-4 writing part?

Research tools

This study adopts a combination of quantitative research and qualitative research.The quantitative research mainly adopts questionnaire survey and data analysis method to understand the current situation of CET-4 writing part and the basic situation of CET-4 writing marking teachers.Qualitative research includes the analysis of the current situation of CET-4 writing part and the research on English teaching strategies.After the test,some teachers who marking CET-4 writing part were selected at random to conduct in-depth interviews on college English writing teaching and teaching strategies.

Research process

The questionnaire of this study was distributed to CET-4 writing marking teachers on the morning of July 15,2015,and collected on July 16,2015.A total of 70 questionnaires were distributed and 64 valid questionnaires were received.The effective rate of the questionnaire is 91%.The study investigates the basic information of 64 college English teachers who participated in this survey,including gender,age,job title and the number of corrected papers.

Sample analysis

The basic information of 64 college English teachers who participated in this survey is shown in Table 1：

Table 1 The basic information of 64 marking teachers for CET-4 writing

Table 2 Cross analysis two-dimensional table

Results and Analysis

The basic requirements and scoring standard of CET-4 writing part

In terms of the requirements of CET-4 syllabus,students should write a composition with clear expression and no major language mistakes among 120-150 words in half an hour according to a certain topic or outline.To a certain extent,the examination of CET-4 composition can test whether students can use English vocabulary,grammar and sentence patterns flexibly or not and represent their English foundation and their ability.Therefore,in terms of investigating the current situation of students’CET-4 writing part,the questionnaire lists seven major problems related to students’writing part,which are word spelling,sentence expression,grammatical structure,thought expression,the coherence of the context and the relevance to the topic.In the survey,the teachers need to fill in seven aspects of the problems,of which 36%of teachers considered that the main problems of students’writing part is grammar structure,25%of the teachers think students’sentence expression are the main problems.The problems of word spellings and relevance to the topic in the writing part accounted for 15% and 13% respectively.These data show that that students’syntactic structure and sentence expression are the most obvious problems in CET-4 writing,among which whether students can write correct and beautiful sentences according to grammar rules.

Teachers’concern on marking writing part

What is the most important content that the marking teacher pays attention to when correcting the CET-4 writing part? The survey shows most teachers think that the accuracy of sentence expression is the most concerned(92%),followed by whether the content is enriched(64%),whether there are bright words(48%),whether the context is coherent(45%),whether there are new ideas(17%),whether the writing template is applied(11%),whether the handwriting is beautiful(9%).

The survey shows teachers are most concerned about sentence patterns which can evaluate students’English foundation and language application ability as well as analytical thinking ability comprehensively.

The status quo of CET-4 writing

According to the standard of evaluation for CET-4 writing part,global scoring method is adopted for CET-4 writing part.Teachers should give reward scores according to the overall impression rather than deduct points according to the number of grammar mistakes.Teachers should judge the CET-4 writing part comprehensively ranging from content to language,because the content and language cannot be separated.It depends whether students can express ideas clearly and properly in English.The grading standard of writing part is divided into five grades:2,5,8,11 and 14 points.Teachers correct the compositions according to the marking standard.If the composition is similar to a certain score(8 points),which will be set as the score(8 points).The teacher can add one point(9 points)or deduct one point(7 points)accordingly.According to the survey,it is found that 48% teachers think that the students’writing with 5 points is poor,45%teachers think that the students’writing part with 8 points is common,and 4.7%teachers think that the students’writing with 2 points is very poor.As for the statistical data,the average score of CET-4 writing part is 5.7 points,and most of the writing part are 5 points,which is equivalent to 34 points in the hundred-mark system.The data shows that the level of students’writing is very unsatisfactory after nearly 10 years of English learning.

Status quo of marking CET-4 writing part

A marking teacher should grade 400 compositions a day minimally.Therefore,it requires teachers to have high standards on the speed and quality of marking.From the statistical data,teachers’average speed of marking a composition is 46 seconds.How to mark writing part in such a short time?Most of the students divide writing part into three parts,beginning,body part and the conclusion part.According to the survey,64% teachers focus on the body part of writing mainly,31% teachers go through the composition from the beginning to end,3% teachers look at the beginning part,2%teachers check the ending part mainly.It is obvious that body part can reflect the students’English level,especially the expression of sentences and the interpretation of contents.

Difference analysis of CET-4 writing marking teachers

Differences of CET-4 writing marking by different types of teachers

Table 2 shows that there is no difference between teachers with different genders and the number of times they take part in CET-4 writing marking.However,there are significant differences between teachers with different teaching experience and different technical titles.The chi-square value is 0.046 and 0.36 respectively,both within 0.01

Differences of different types of marking teachers on how to improve students'CET-4 writing level

Table 2 shows that there is no difference in improving students’CET-4 writing as for different genders and teaching experience.However,chi-square value shows the improvement of CET-4 writing by teacher with different teaching experience is significantly different,with the chi-square value of 0.042.Specifically speaking,lecturers and associate professors with more than 5 years of teaching experience tend to train students to write sentences and strengthen the guidance and training of writing ideas and grammar teaching,while teachers with less than 5 years of teaching experience tend to pay attention to the spelling and use of new words.

Differences of Micro-courses in helping students’CET-4 writing

In recent years,a course resource integrating language,images,sounds,expressions,movements and other multi-modes has developed rapidly at home and abroad.Micro-courses were first proposed in the fall of 2008 by David Penrose,online services manager for the College of Advanced Instructional Designers at San Juan College in New Mexico.He has drastically compressed an hour or even hours of instructional video into a few minutes,allowing students to acquire knowledge online.Zhang Yichun,a teacher from Nanjing Normal University,believes that the microcourse refers to a short and complete teaching activity centering on a certain knowledge point or teaching part,which is presented in the form of streaming media in order to achieve the best effect of learners’independent learning.As a new teaching course resource,micro-courses integrates various modes,which provides a new breakthrough for college English teaching reform(Ma,2015,p.66).As we can see from Table 2,all teachers,regardless of their gender,teaching experience,technical titles and the number of times they take part in marking CET-4 writing,believe that this new teaching model is helpful to CET-4 writing teaching.

Differences in improving CET-4 writings by teachers with different types

According to the data in Table 2,chi-square P values are all above 0.05.All teachers,regardless of gender,teaching experience,technical title and the number of times they took part in marking CET-4 writing,are confident and optimistic about the improvement of students’writing.

Discussion

Based on the survey on teachers of marking CET-4 writing part,we have a certain understanding of the current situation of CET-4 writing part.The following is to elaborate and put forward some suggestions on CET-4 writing teaching strategies.

Strengthen the lexical approach and improve the language awareness of learners

English language is not isolated.The linguists represented by Michael Lewis put forward the concept of lexical chunks(Lewis,1993).They think language mainly consists of lexical chunks rather than vocabulary or grammar.Lexical chunks are a blend of the form and function of language,reflecting the relationship between semantic,syntactic and pragmatics,it can not only promote the development of the rules of grammar but help improve the accuracy of language expression(Guo & Mao,2010,p.52).Through the questionnaire survey,most of the students can’t write standard sentence expression.Therefore,teachers should strengthen the lexical chunk teaching,cultivate learners’language consciousness and grasp the English language thinking model.

Strengthen college English autonomous teaching model by using network technology

According to the survey,there are a lot of grammar mistakes in the students’CET-4 writing part,most of which are serious mistakes.With the development of science and technology,there are lots of writing marking websites.The marking network can correct writing part automatically,which can stimulate students writing motivation,achieve selfexploration and innovation.They can also enhance self-efficiency of the writing ability,improve the autonomous writing motivation and ability(Yang&Dai,2015,p.17).

Enhancing the length approach in writing teaching based on write-to-learn

As for the survey,it is found that some students’writing is disorganized,the writing content is empty and coherence is poor.It can be seen that students usually have little time to train their writing.As we all know,writing is an important way to test the output of knowledge.The length approach of writing model is proposed by professor Wang Chuming,an expert of second language acquisition in China.In college English writing teaching,the length approach can stimulate students’mastery of language and strengthen English basic skill(Wang&Wang,2019,p.1).It can also conquer students’fear of making mistakes and improve their foreign language skills.

Improving college English writing teaching based on micro-courses

In the micro-course writing teaching,teachers set writing tasks for the students before the class according to different genres of CET-4 writing part.Writing tasks can be completed by the group or individual.In the class,teachers and students can discuss and solve writing problems face-to-face,and the teachers can evaluate and analyze the writing part and summarize it at the end of the class so as to arouse the students’interest in writing and autonomous learning ability(Yang&Dai,2015,p.17).

After marking CET-4 writing part,6 teachers marking CET-4 writing were interviewed.The interview further verified the above survey.All the six teachers think that the accurate sentence expression is an important standard to measure CET-4 writing part.Some young teachers think that it is feasible to apply and promote college English writing teaching based on micro-courses by using the network platform.

Conclusion

Based on the data collected from 64 front-line teachers who took part in marking CET-4 writing part,this paper finds that students’CET-4 writing is not satisfactory,and there are many problems such as sentence expression,grammatical structure and context coherence in their writing part.Besides it is found that the different teaching experience and technical titles of teachers on students’writing guidance have significant differences through the difference analysis of the teachers marking CET-4 writing part.At the same time,they also think that micro-courses are helpful for CET-4 composition teaching.Finally,this paper puts forward some learning strategies and writing teaching suggestions for CET-4 writing,which is expected to play a guiding role in the students’CET-4 writing.