方靜

【Abstract】In China， both teachers and students consider writing in English a difficult and painful process. Students overall writing skills need to be improved. This paper focuses on three specific strategies that teachers can employ to help Chinese middle-school children improve their English writing skills.

【Key words】writing skills； rural middle school students； three strategies

Researchers in English educational field are trying to find ways to improve students writing skills. One way to do this is to equip classrooms with multimedia teaching devices. Other studies show that the quality of writing instruction can be improved by employing more foreign teachers to create the authentic English learning environment. Successful cases can be found in urban middle schools （Wang & Li， 2009）. However， children in rural areas do not have the same access to educational resources and opportunities. It is nearly impossible for them to create a multimedia teaching environment and employ foreign teachers. Consequently， teachers in rural middle schools must focus mainly on the teaching process.

This paper focuses on three specific strategies that teachers can employ to help Chinese middle-school children improve their English writing skills. These three strategies correspond to three phases in the English writing process. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate why these three strategies should be employed to instruct students in English writing.

Three systematically related steps in writing are before-writing， during-writing and after-writing， which correspond to the following three strategies.

Five-paragraph Writing

Five-paragraph writing is a structured writing pattern including three parts： the first paragraph aims to introduce the theme of the writing； the second part comprises three paragraphs which contain three clearly-stated supporting topic sentences and details； and the last paragraph is responsible for summarizing the three main points and reclaiming the theme （Tan， 2015）.

Two major reasons contribute to this formats effectiveness. Firstly， the English literacy degree of many teachers in secondary schools is comparatively low， and they are not capable of coming up with effective writing patterns to strengthen students writing abilities. They need the five-paragraph pattern because it is easy for non-native teachers to understand and instruct. Secondly， due to the limited teaching resources and poor teaching qualities， students in rural middle schools are far behind their urban peers （Hu， 2003）. Rural students need practical and effective techniques to improve their basic English writing abilities. The five-paragraph writing pattern consists of three systematically linked parts to elaborate a thesis， which is a good sample for students to imitate and practice how to illustrate their thoughts logically.