4.2 While-test 12
4.3 Class intervention 14
4.4 After-class interview 14
4.4 Data collection 15
4.5 Results and discussion 15
4.5.1 Results and discussion of research Question One 16
4.5.2 Results and discussion of research Question Two 16
4.5.3 Results and discussion of research Question Three 17
5 Conclusion 19
5.1 Major Findings and Implications 19
5.2 Limitations and Future Expectations 19
6 References 21
1. Introduction
1.1 Analysis of writing obstacles
In English learning, listening, speaking, writing and reading are regarded as a whole. Listening and reading are input while speaking and writing are output. As for the higher grade students in primary school, the ability to write well is essential for their language learning. As for the students, especially for grade five and grade six students, they are able to use present tense to talk about some simple sentences to describe a certain topic. They know how to greet each other and learn how to make up sentences by given words. However, when it comes to writing, most of the students will face the problems like grammatical mistakes, lack of vocabularies and lacking experiences. From time to time, writing becomes a dull and stressful activity, which results in students’ dislike towards English writing and leads to a vicious circle. Also, the limited English class each week also contributes to the overlook of English writing. Teachers do not pay much attention to raise students’ interest in English writing, usually, their writing processes are dull and less interesting. Thus, their writing ability decreased a lot. As for the primary school students, their learning depends mostly on visual and auditory information. According to their psychological development, students can easily remove their attention from one thing to another other. Based on the above two characters, teaching writing in a less attractive way will cause bad effect on students writing ability.
1.2 Requirement from New English Curriculum
According to New National English Curriculum in China, which is the 2011 version, students in grade six are required to write simple sentences according to the given words or examples. As for the grade five and six students, students should write several sentences to describe something according to the picture, simple hints or words. The sentence structure would be much complex. Students need to change tense and verb according to the given time and characters. However, the rule of English learning is different from Chinese learning. Influenced by mother tongue, students sometimes may be confused about the grammar focus and they are easy to make mistakes. In order to let students write correct sentence, it is important to draw students’ attention and their awareness in grammar focus through an interesting and vivid way.
1.3 Advantages of picture books
Picture books play an important role in young children's everyday lives and are considered by most parents (96%) to support the intellectual development of their children (Rideout, Vandewater & Wartella, 2003). A picture book has so many elements that would arouse students’ visual and verbal narratives in a book format,. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil, among others. the iconicity of the images, the iconicity – realism – of the pictures presented in the book, with greater iconicity leading to better learning (Ganea, Pickard & Deloache, 2008). Special attention has been paid to the area of reading picture books because of their multimodal nature and the demands they place on readers due to the use of two sign systems, written language and images, and their common presence in elementary school classrooms (Serafini, 2010). 绘本对小学生写作能力提升的影响(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_50936.html