The four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing have always been the emphasis of Chinese language teaching, with writing being the benchmark of the standard of the other three skills. Hence, the study of students’ writing skills remains a paramount issue in Chinese language education. This study aims to investigate the writing skills of the grade nine students of a secondary school in Macau. To help students overcome their weaknesses in writing, the findings are used to develop a series of modules for senior high school writing syllabus. The study lasted for two years, sampling a total number of 335 grade nine students enrolled in the academic years of 2003 and 2004. The test was conducted in the form of writing with a given topic. The topic and evaluation rubric are the same as the Chinese writing assessment in the Study on the Diagnostic Assessment of Academic Competence in Basic Education in Macau in 2000. The rubric covers eight criteria: relevance, correct use of words, word choice, sentence fluency, rhetoric, clarity, organization and content. The results of the test indicated that students performed the worst in rhetoric. Of the 143 students enrolled in 2003, only one achieved the highest score —3; 49 students scored 1-2 and 93 students scored 0. Of the 192 students enrolled in 2004, only six scored 3; 62 scored 1-2 and 124 scored 0. From the perspective of rhetoric teaching, the results of the study provide insight into developing a series of moduies on the use of rhetoric figures for senior high school writing syllabus. The modules are centered around the 13 rhetoric figures used by the students sampled in the test, which include: ploce, anthypophora, parallelism, interrogatio, quotation, anaphora, anadiplosis, personification, metonymy, onomatopoeia, climax, apostrophe, and simile. It is hoped that the writing programme will help students apply the rhetoric figures they have learned into daily writing practice.

中國語文教學一直強調聽、說、讀、寫四種能力的培養，而四種語文能力中，寫作能力的表現，是較能體現學生的多方面才能的。所以，對學生寫作能力進行研究，是語文教育的一個重要課題。 本研究是以澳門一所中學的初三學生作為對象，探討其中文寫作能力的情況，從而為高中的作文教學設計一系列單元活動，以補學生在作文學習上的不足。 研究分兩年進行，主要抽取該校 2003 學年和 2004 學年共 335 名初三學生作測試對象。測試內容是以命題作文方式進行，題目和評核標準則參考 2000 年澳門大學所做的「澳門基礎教育學科能力檢定性評核研究」中的中國語文科作文測試部分為內容。文題是「我喜歡的一個節日」- 測試的評核標準共分八個項目，包括:(1)切合題旨；(2)無錯別字；(3)用詞恰當；(4)文句通暢；(5)修辭應用；(6)條理清晰；(7) 結構嚴謹和(8)內容充實。 測試結果發現，八個項目中以「修辭應用」一項得分最少。03 學年 143 名受測試學生中，取得滿分3分只有1人，而1-2分只有49人，0分有93人。而 04 學年 192 名受測試學生中，取得滿分3分只有6人，而 1-2分只有 62人，0分有124 人。 由於測試發現初三學生對修辭運用的問題頗大，故本研究從修辭教學的角度出發,以受測試學生會使用的13個修辭格。包括：(1)疊字疊詞；(2)設問；(3)排比；(4)反問；(5)引用；(6)反復；(7)頂真；(8)擬人；(9借喻；(10)擬聲；(11)層遞；(12)呼告；(13)明喻等為中心，為初三學生升上高一時的作文教學，設計了一系列有關修辭格使用的單元活動，希望透過這些補充課程的活動，讓學生將會學過的修辭格，適當地使用到平日的寫作練習裡。