Basic English Writing: A Classroom Experiment In Student-Oriented Design And Textbook

Abstract

Basic English Writing (BEW) courses have been part of English learning curricula in many universities. Some research has been conducted to investigate various class designs for English language courses. However, class designs for English writing are not yet abundantly developed to provide more experimental results. The purpose of this study was to experiment with a class design in accordance with a student-orient textbook. It explored the learning effect of beginning writers who participated in an experiment of the student-oriented class design and textbook. Participants included native Chinese seniors, taking Basic English Writing (BEW) classes. They were intermediate level students in terms of English proficiency. The study was conducted with two groups and it lasted 18 weeks. The two groups were evaluated by a final writing test. The final writing test was analyzed with four variables included in text analysis and an untried variable included in grammar. The results indicated that the class design helped the participants learn basic writing skills and apply them more frequently in their compositions at the end of the experiment. This design and textbook may be an easier and more systematic teaching strategy for BEW teachers.