Study on the Improvement of English Writing Abilities through Online Interactive Activities From a Constructive Perspective

DOI

10.2991/icelaic-16.2017.91How to use a DOI?

Keywords

constructivism; English writing instruction; online writing

Abstract

The fast development of economy and technology in recent years presents new opportunities as well as challenges for English teaching in China. On one hand, there are higher demands on college English learners' mastery of English. After years of being passive learners and fed with chunks of bite-sized knowledge, they are now challenged to become active learners, critical thinkers and communicative writers of English. On the other hand, computer technology is more closely integrated into the language classroom and offers new opportunities for computer-assisted language learning (CALL) activities. In particular, computer-assisted online learning projects prove extremely helpful in the teaching of English writing. Along with these changes, the constructivist learning perspective is highly evaluated currently, which emphasizes learners' active learning and construction of meaning. In the perspective of constructivist learning, teachers should assume more of a facilitators' role and learners take more control over their learning. Hence, it seems that constructivist learning theories will throw hints on the current reform in English teaching. Therefore, the current thesis attempts to explore a new approach to improve students' writing abilities through online interactive writing activities. The thesis starts with the theoretical framework of the study. Then it is followed by the problems existed in current college EFL writing instruction in China and students' expectation to online writing. The latter part of the thesis reports on the experiment about the application of extra curriculum online writing activities, conducted among 36 students from Zaozhuang University. Three hypotheses are put forward. The results of the study show that online writing activities are effective in improving students' writing abilities and teacher acts more of a participant than merely an assistant or coordinator. The thesis concludes with some implications for future studies in this field.

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Chunli Zhang
PY  - 2016/12
DA  - 2016/12
TI  - Study on the Improvement of English Writing Abilities through Online Interactive Activities From a Constructive Perspective
BT  - Proceedings of the 2016 3rd International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2016)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 380
EP  - 390
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icelaic-16.2017.91
DO  - 10.2991/icelaic-16.2017.91
ID  - Zhang2016/12
ER  -