Research on English Writing

Author: Wen Qiufang, Wang Lifei (editors)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: This book is divided into 5 chapters and selects 28 empirical research papers on second language writing written by scholars from Nanjing University and other domestic universities in recent years. These papers were published in important foreign language academic journals in China and comprehensively reflect the level and current state of second language writing research in our country. These papers cover the following five aspects: (1) the relationship between native language thinking and English writing; (2) discourse features of English essays; (3) linguistic features of English essays; (4) factors influencing English writing ability; (5) English writing instruction. In terms of research methods, these achievements employ various approaches, including think-aloud protocols, writing tests, text analysis, questionnaires, classroom experiments, structural equation modeling, and corpus retrieval. Due to space limitations, this book does not include articles on writing theory research. During the editing process of this book, we received assistance from Ma Dongmei, Cao Xiaoyu, Qian Ming, Wang Rong, Tang Xianfeng, and others. We sincerely express our gratitude to them. With the rapid development of computer technology and corpus linguistics, second language writing research in China has shown even broader prospects, and second language writing research will enter a new stage. As this book is about to go to press, we received the news that Guangdong University of Foreign Studies will hold a special symposium on "The Method of Writing Longer Essays" for English writing instruction at the end of 2003, which greatly encouraged us. Research findings on second language writing instruction in China have already been applied to college English teaching practices and have yielded fruitful results. We look forward to even greater achievements in English writing research in our country.