【Abstract】Writing is an important part in learning English. In almost all china’s schools， the teaching aims about English learning contain like this: the school students must have certain skills about listening， speaking， reading and writing. Writing is very tough to develop among the four skills. And over the years the poor performance in writing on the part of Chinese students has upset even the most experienced teachers in China. It is still a headache for many English teachers to find ways to improve students’ writing ability.

【Key words】English writing teaching; problems; approaches

I. Problems in Teaching English Writing

English teachers usually follow the traditional method with emphasis on the grammar and vocabulary. And all that just serves for helping the students to score better in examinations. Most of students cannot find appropriate strategies for learning to write and they do not know how to express and organizing their ideas in English. What they do is just draft in Chinese first， and then translates the Chinese materials into English. So it is not surprising that some Chinese students’ writing appears to be unclear and with confused logic.

II. Suggested Approaches to Improve the Students’ Writing Ability

1. Topic discussion

In this activity， the teacher will first give a simple topic sentence before class， and then students are told to develop the sentence into a short passage according to his or her preferences and improvisation. This is a writing activity that is especially useful during a lesson sequence and also can be used as a prelude to a discussion， or a debate. In this interesting process， students are asked to change the sentence to reflect their own points of view around the topic sentence. Through topic discussion， students can develop freely their own thoughts and their writing ability will gradually be enhanced.

2. Abbreviation， Summary， Comment

In this activity， the teacher will give the students a long passage that is not difficult for average students， and then students are asked to give a brief statement about the main idea and the important details. The teachers often pick up the passage for abbreviation materials from the text learnt before， because on one hand， students tend to be familiar to these articles and it is relatively easy for them to catch the main idea in short time， on the other hand， it is an effective way to improve students’ writing ability. In the process， the students will be given enough time to read the materials intensively in order to first catch the main idea， and then get the information in details. In the end， the summary should be accomplished briefly and concisely. Sometimes， the teachers will give an article about the hot controversial issue; students can make a comment on it.

3. Expending outline into essay

This activity is used most frequently in writing class. The teachers seem to prefer using this approach partially because of its availability in improving students’ ability in a short span of time. Often， students are required to list topic sentences with the key words or controlling idea according to the materials. These sentences can build the outline of the passage and students can put them together to form an essay. “The whole process involves a complex interplay between observation and synthesis， between visual reading and creative written work.”(Xie Wenyu， 2004) It is therefore a very profitable activity for the highly-activated students to improve their writing ability.

4. Model-imitations practice

“Imitation is an important cognitive behavior of human beings. Any experienced teachers will agree on the effectiveness and the importance of the model-imitation practice in writing teaching.”(Jia Xiangliu， 2006) In this activity， students will be given an outstanding composition as example for imitating. Often， students need to imitate the excellent model’s layout， various sentences structures， beautiful sentences and incisive vocabulary and so on. This is an also practical method adopted in the class.

III. Conclusion

Writing， a complicated process， plays a more and more critical role in communication. As it can reflect one’s comprehensive language ability in some ways， teachers and students should pay more and more attention to it. Like change the former prejudice that English writing is not as important as that of other three language skills and treats it more seriously than before and reform the situation that writing course accounts for too small partion in teaching syllabus. Teachers should try their best to pluralize their teaching approaches to meet the students’ needs and cultivate their motivations and interests to write in English.

References：

[1]David Nunan.2001.Teaching Students to Write.New York:Oxford University Press.