Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Present Study
CLT makes great contribution to some complicated studies such as educationalpsychology and cognitive psychology (Tang Jianggang & Zhou Ying, 2008). CLT hasbeen used as an established theory in the field of teaching and learning in the pastdecade (Kirschner, 2002). Recently, more and more linguists and educators havebecome to apply CLT to classroom instruction aiming at optimizing learning forlearners. CLT provides us a fundamental and theoretical framework for adjustingclassroom instruction based on human’s cognitive information. Writing has been considered as one of the most difficult and comprehensivetasks compared with listening, speaking, reading and translation in foreign languagelearning since it involves several different areas of skills. Unfortunately, for thosenon-English majors, they usually learn writing skills unsystematically in readingcourses, which follows the same way: after the analysis of the structure and content ofone reading text by teachers, one composition is asked to finish as homework afterclass. Hence, the writing proficiency of non-English majors is relatively low since they lack interests and have no clear ideas about how to effectively write. As a result,students’ compositions are short of content or a clear theme with rambling structureand massive Chinglish. Traditional writing instruction is quite difficult to achieve thegoal of improving their writing proficiency.In addition, the average score of CET-4 is between 5 to 8 (The full score is 15).It also indicates that those compositions have no clear content, lack coherence with anumber of grammar mistakes according to standard evaluation of CET-4 writing.Writing should take many factors into account at the same time, such as content,organization, grammar and vocabulary. But many students have no sense how toallocate tasks of writing when time pressures so as to get low scores in CET-4.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Present Study
Cognitive overload is considered as the critical problem for students when theyare composing a composition since they must take into account of a variety of factorsat different levels simultaneously. It will definitely overload students’ workingmemory as students should consider the organization, content and vocabulary withinthe limited time. Besides, students’ writing activities are heavily dependent on theirallocation of cognitive resource in working memory.Therefore, the author wrote this thesis aiming at finding out whetherCLT-oriented writing instruction promotes students’ writing proficiency and the degree of its influence. In addition, this thesis further explores possible methods thatare connected with CLT in college English writing instruction to help studentseffectively assign tasks of writing within the limited working memory.On the basis of the background, CLT-oriented writing instruction can providetheoretical and pedagogical implications in the aspect of improving students’ writingproficiency as well as raising teaching efficiency in writing instruction.On one hand, the present study will contribute to the theoretical development ofCLT in the field of learning and teaching. The application of CLT has begun to appearin e-learning activities overseas recently. Chinese educators did not pay attention tothis field of study until the year of 2000. Hence, there is no systematic writinginstruction model with the guidance of CLT. From the theoretical aspects, if CLT haspositive effects on improving students’ writing proficiency, Chinese educators canfurther research on it and work out a practical writing instruction for Chinese students.On the other hand, English teachers can make adjustment for further English writinginstruction according to the allocation of cognitive resource.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Cognitive Load Theory
Cognitive load is widely believed as a multidimensional construct that presentsthe load that is imposed on cognitive system of a particular learner when he or shewas performing a special task. (Pass, 1994, pp. 122-133)According to Sweller (1998), he considers cognitive load as the total sum ofmental activities, which is imposed on working memory at one time. Hence, the majorfactors leading to the cognitive load are a variety of elements that have to be attendedto.In the early 1980s, Van and Sweller (2005) put forward cognitive load theory(CLT), which was based on human cognitive architecture. CLT supposes that humancognitive architecture includes working memory and long-term memory. As forworking memory, it has limited capacity when dealing with information. Long-termmemory, on the contrary, has effectively unlimited ability to hold a good deal ofcognitive schemas. Learners would be cognitively overloaded when carrying out complex tasks because of the limited working memory, which only contains sevenelements of information when dealing with conscious activities. The unlimitedlong-term memory can be used for storing different degrees of schemas. According toPass, Renkl, and Sweller (2003), schemas are regarded as cognitive constructs that areconsist of massive information into a single element based on the manner where theyare used. Hence, the final objective of learning is to store new information inlong-term memory with the form of schemas or to form automation of schemas.(Sweller, 1998, pp. 257-285) However, from the point of schema theory, informationmust be processed through working memory before being stored in long-term memory.Basically, CLT supposes that learning will be blocked when working memory isoverloaded in a learning activity.
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2.2 English Writing
This part gives the brief introduction about the basic review of English writing,including its definition and main approaches. ity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text”, “theactivity or occupation of composing text for publication”, “written work, especiallywith regard to its style or quality”, “books, stories, articles or other written works”, “asequence of letters, words or symbols marked on paper or some other surface” and“handwriting”. Based on these definitions, it is easy to figure out that writing is an act,which includes letter formation and written expression where thoughts are conceivedand ideas are executed in written form.At the beginning of 1960s, a number of empirical studies began to focus on thenotion of a writer’s authentic voice and the ability of expressing himself in writing.Until 1980s, writing was regarded as a socialcultural process as well as a cognitiveprocess. Later, researches on writing comprehensively concerned with writing incultural, social and historical fields (Silva & Leki, 2000).
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Chapter 3 Methodology.......26
3.1 Research Questions ....26
3.2 Subjects.......26
3.3 Instruments.......27
3.3.1 Tests .........28
3.3.2 Questionnaire .....28
3.3.3 Interview .......29
3.4 Research Procedures ........30
3.5 Data Collection and Analysis .....34
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion ......37
4.1 The Results.......37
4.2 Discussion .......45
Chapter 5 Conclusion.....51
5.1 Main Findings and Pedagogical Implications......51
5.2 Limitations of the Present Study.....55
5.3 Suggestions for Further Reasearches.........55
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
4.1 The Results
In order to testify if CLT had an influence on EFL writing instruction, anindependent samples T-test was used to compare the two different writing instructionsapplied to the control group and the experimental group independently. What’ more, apaired samples T-test was also used to compare the changes of scores in the pre-testand post-test of both groups. With the help of the Independent Samples T-test of the pre-test in Table 4.1, the mean score of the experimental group is 14.36 with a standard deviation of 4.96, andthe mean score of the control group is 13.98 with a standard deviation of 4.29. Hence,the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group are almost the same.Besides, p=0.788> 0.5 which means that there is no significant differences in writingproficiency between the two groups. Therefore, it can guarantee the validity andreliability of the experiment.
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Conclusion
In English teaching and learning process, writing is considered as the mostcomplex task in that it contains multitasks at the same time. Therefore, students’writing scores are not high and difficult to improve with the current writinginstruction. With this practical background, the author conducted an empirical study toapply CLT to English writing instruction so as to study whether or not the cognitiveload could be reduced with some classroom designed activities. In this chapter, firstly,this thesis makes a general overview of main findings, followed by pedagogicalimplications. Secondly, some limitations for the study are pointed out. Finally, it alsoprovides some constructive suggestions for the further researches. This thesis presented a relevant theoretical literature review, which was acomprehensive introduction of the basic information about Cognitive Load Theoryand English writing, the relationship between CLT and English writing and theprevious studies of CLT on language instruction. Based on the related review ofliterature, the author carried out a 13-week experiment in Shenyang NormalUniversity with non-English majors in order to test the effectiveness of CLT-orientedwriting instruction and get to know students’ perceptions on the new writinginstruction with the data analysis through SPSS 18.0. The major findings wereillustrated as below.
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