An Empirical Study On The Application Of Product-oriented Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Under the background of cultivating the key competency of the subject,China’s foreign language education is constantly making reforms and innovations.The new English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School issued in 2018 regards the four key competencies(language competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability)as the core of subject cultivation,but the key problem is how to apply the key competencies to the practical teaching.Writing is the comprehensive embodiment of language ability,and language ability is the foundation of key competency,so the improvement of writing has become the focus of realizing the improvement of key competency.However,the current English writing classes focus on input rather than output,ignoring the connection between learning and using,which leads to the failure of the the ultimate goal of humanistic education.At present,there are several problems of the situation of senior high school students’ English writing.Firstly,the negative emotions like fear and anxiety will occur when students finish a writing task.Secondly,there are many grammar mistakes,logical mess and new contents are seldom seen in the students’ composition.In recent years,many scholars and front-line teachers apply professor Wen’ POA to the teaching and learning of English listening,speaking,reading,writing and translating and explore its validity.In this study,the author applies the Product-Oriented Approach to the English writing class in senior high school and explores its influence on the comprehensive ability of English writing.The research questions of this paper are as follow.1)is the Product-oriented Approach more effective in improving students’ writing performance than the other conventional writing method(e.g.PWP)?2)is the Product-Oriented Approach more effective in improving students’ key competency than the other conventional writing method(e.g.PWP)?The subjects of this study are 84 students in two similar classes of grade 2 in a high school in Huizhou city,with 42 students in each class.Class 1 is a control class,the conventional teaching method(e.g.PWP)is applied in it.Class 5 is the experimental class,which adopts the Product-Oriented Approach for teaching writing.The Product-oriented Approach and the conventional teaching method(e.g.PWP)are compared by the means of referencing,analyzing and arranging of a large amount of literature,and experimental class and control class are conducted for 16 weeks of experimental teaching.Meanwhile,the teacher focuses on observing students’ learning reactions and communicating with students after class about the feedback of the writing class.In the first week,a pre-writing test is conducted for the experimental class and the control class.The scores are based on the college entrance examination scoring standard.The writing tests are assessed by two senior teachers of the middle school.Besides,SPSS21.0 is adopted for the independent sample T-test of the pre-test data,and the results showed that there was no significant difference between experimental class and control class(Sig=0.981).During the experiment,a writing lesson is conducted every two weeks and every period lasts two hours.After 16 weeks,a post-test conducted in these two classes,and the way of reviewing and processing data are same to the pre-test.The results showed that both two classes’ writing scores are improved,but the performance of them are significantly difference(Sig=0.030).Specifically,the mean of experimental class increase by 2.36,while the control class only improved 0.33.In addition.The Standard Deviation of pre-test and post-test indicated that the overall writing performance of the experimental class is improved.Two conclusions can be drawn by analyzing the data and instructional design:1)Product-oriented Approach are more effective in the improvement of students’ writing performance than conventional writing method(e.g.PWP).Besides,the students’ overall writing level also can be improved by applying it.2)Product-oriented Approach are more effective in the improvement of students’ key competency than conventional writing method(e.g.PWP).In order to improve the quality of high school English students’ writing output tasks and the key competency effectively,teachers need to integrate and gain a thorough understanding of the three teaching concepts of the POA,then apply the key competency to all aspects and steps of the POA’s teaching.Besides,teachers should make good use of their leading roles inteaching and never ignore students’ subject status in learning at the same time.In addition,teachers should play a crucial part in designing,leading,scaffolding and assessing during the writing class.