Teaching English Writing For Senior High School Students In Task-Based Teaching Approach

Writing is an extremely complex intellectual process. This process involves the recursive application of wide rang of thinking skills and language abilities. Learning to write fluently and expressively is often considered the most difficult of the macro-skills for all languages, whether the language is a first, second or foreign language. White says that writing is not a natural activity, which can promote the automation of the target language's using so as to effectively accelerate the acquisition of the target language.In China, writing is always a weak aspect of English teaching. In spite of the hard work of many teachers and scholars, the effect is still not satisfactory. And students all regard writing as tough job that can't accomplish, some even give it up. As a consequence, the effect of learning is also not satisfactory.The theoretic base of this paper is the "the input and interaction hypothesis" advocated by Krashen. A large quantity of materials about writing teaching for years at home and abroad have been collected, summarized and analyzed. Combined with the present situation of middle school English writing, the Task-based Teaching (TBT) approach is advocated, which means writing should be connected to the authentic life. The focus should be put on the meaning of the language instead of the form of the grammar structure in the process of pair work and group work. The students will learn writing in a quite happy way and the writing interest arises so as finally to promote the students' English writing level.The experiment was carried out in two third grade classes in the Middle School attached to Lanzhou Jiaotong University. One was made the experimental class and adopted the TBT approach, while the other the control class and the 3Ps (Presentation Practice, Production) approach. The outcome shows that the English writing scores of the students from the experimental class improved obviously, which verifies that the hypothesis was feasible and valid.The whole paper is made up of six sections. The first section deals with the objective and the significance of the present study at the perspective of the acknowledgement of the present classroom teaching conditions. It also pointed out the advantage of TBT and the theoretical base, that is the "the input and interaction hypothesis " of Krashen. There are also some basic ideas by Long and Willis.Section Two deals with the literature review both at home and abroad. It gives a summary of what the writing approach was before and after the 1970s. The writing teaching approaches transformed from the traditional grammar way, which focused on the form of the language to product and processapproaches. We can see the comparison and evaluation about these two approaches by experts. Here are also some researches in task-based teaching approach for writing done by scholars at home.Section Three is about the experiment, which is the heart of the whole study. It includes the hypothesis, the subjects and the procedure. Before the experiment, a questionnaire was distributed to the subjects, 80 students of the two classes. The results forcefully proved that the presupposition of the experiment was ascertained. That is, there is no difference of writing ideas between the two groups of subjects. During the experiment, basic method of TBT was adopted, such as pair work, group discussion etc. to activate the students to participate in the writing process while at the same time to use the new approach as much as possible. What was used as pretest and post-test were the writing pieces in the Diagnosing Exam for 2003 and that in 2004 for the students in Lanzhou.Section Four is assigned to data processing. The statistic program SSPS was used. A group of statistics and an independent sample test are made to testify that the two groups, the experimental class and the control class were at the same writing level before the experiment. Both the exam results of pretest and posttest were transformed into t-scores. Thereafter, comparison was made between the different values of the two tests. And all the result verified that the students in the experimental class had a better writing level than the control class. The results offered persuasive evidence to the hypothesis.Section Five is the last section of this paper. Focus was put on the discussion, summary and the limitation of this research. That is purposely using the traditional writing teaching approach in the control class may stagnate their learning achievements. And also the quantitative methods were used as the main instruments. Meanwhile, many other factors affecting learning achievements were not concerned and that's also the limitation in China.In short, the present study has its merits and demerits, though the researcher has managed to search for the suitable way and spared no efforts to the last. To put it another way, limitations may lead to great efforts to exceed or break through. The thesis has finished for the moment, but further probe into TBT writing will never come to an end. Any criticisms are welcome for better cooperation in academic circle.