A Study On The Application Of The ARCS Model To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

With the trend of globalization,English as the most widely spoken language plays an important role in students’ future development.At the same time,The Standard of English Curriculum which was published in 2011 by the Ministry of Education emphasizes the importance of English writing and also sets forth the requirements for students’ writing skills.However,there are still many problems in teaching English writing in junior high schools.Firstly,teachers put their teaching focus on grammar and language points related to exams,and neglect English writing teaching leading to limited improvement of students’ writing ability.Secondly,students do not have the opportunity to write their own ideas,and after a long time they lose interest in English writing,which leads to a great reduction of their learning motivation,thus affecting the efficiency of English writing learning.Motivation is an important factor in English teaching.When students have sufficient motivation,they become interested in learning,so teachers need to stimulate students’ interest in learning and turn it into long-term motivation.The ARCS Model(Attention,Relevance,Confidence,Satisfaction)proposed by John M Keller,a psychology professor at Florida State University,can help teachers stimulate students’ interest and motivation in learning.Based on this,the author applies the ARCS Model to English writing teaching in order to motivate students to learn and improve the effectiveness of English writing teaching in junior high school.The research questions are as follows.(1)What is the current situation of junior high school students’ English writing learning,and how to apply the ARCS Model to junior high school English writing teaching?(2)What is the effect of applying the ARCS Model to English writing teaching in junior high school?In this study,students in a third-grade class of a junior high school in Chongqing were investigated,and the current situation of English writing learning of 57 students was investigated and analyzed by using the questionnaire and interview method based on the ARCS Model.And the strategies of four elements were applied to English writing teaching to analyze the impact that the ARCS Model have when applied to English writing teaching in junior high school.The result shows that,combining the strategies of the ARCS Model with instructional design enables students to be effectively motivated to learn,and to a certain extent,it contributes to the improvement of their writing abilities.And the interaction of the four elements of the ARCS Model enables students to develop positive attitudes and motivation to learn.