An Application of Causal-Chain Windowing Theory to the Teaching of Writing

Abstract

Causal-chain windowing is a kind of cognitive process of having the sense of causality in mind, and the cause and result are windowed and attract the attention. Given the appropriate context, the reader can infer the remainder of the event, and different expressions of the same scene, windowed in several different ways, may result in different effects on readers’ mind. Therefore causal-chain windowing theory is useful for the teaching of writing, relating to not only static descriptions as expositional writing, but also dynamic ones as narrative writing, through proper application of the theory. Although many previous linguists and teachers have applied many other theories to the teaching of writing from several angles, few have applied causal-chain windowing theory to the teaching of writing. And the author aims to find a relatively new angle in the old topic – teaching of writing. This paper sets about from some key notions and introduces causal-chain windowing theory, and applies the latter in two aspects, windowing of attention and causal chain. The paper attempts to illustrate the advantages of applying causal-chain windowing theory to the teaching of writing with some examples and claims that causal-chain windowing theory gives clues to writing “different” articles. The aspect of windowing of attention directs students to change sentence patterns and paragraph constructions, and the other aspect, causal chain, leads them to use proper words to express right causal relationship.