An Action Research On The Effects Of POA English Writing Teaching On Junior High School Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

English writing is not only an external output test for language items,but also an intrinsic overall activity for thinking.Students’ existing thinking level can be directly reflected in the whole writing process,such as understanding of given materials,depth of ideas,adequacy of evidences,accuracy of expression,logic of discourse and efficiency of self-assessment.Among all different thinking qualities,critical thinking skills are core competences,which have been especially emphasized in the new round of curriculum reform by the National Department of Education.The cultivation of critical thinking skills ought to be involved in English writing courses,interpretation,analysis,evaluation,inference,explanation,and self-regulation included,so that the need of high-quality foreign language talents can be meted.Nevertheless,exercises of language knowledge still plays a core role in current writing lessons and the following problems are always shown in writing texts of junior students,for example,abuses of advanced words,lack of substantive content and ideas and lack of effective argument and expression,which can be generally called absence of critical thinking qualities.Thus,the question that needs to be answered immediately is how to integrate activities,cultivate students’ critical thinking and promote English writing classroom teaching.According to existing research results,a new teaching model has been paid much attention to recently,which is on the basis of output-driven and input-enabling hypothesis and called Production-oriented Approach（POA）created by Wen Qiufang.That can provide possible solutions for developing students’ critical thinking skill,but its corresponding teaching activities and the influence on students’ six critical thinking sub-skills are to be explored.Therefore,this paper aims to solve the two questions.The author completed two-round educational action research lasting ten weeks in Class Three,Grade Nine,in a junior high school.Interviews and writing tests are used to collect data and the results are analyzed within SPSS 24.0.It proves that the POA English writing teaching model can exert positive effects on students’ overall critical thinking skills.From the macro perspective,the abilities of analysis,evaluation,explanation and self-regulation can get improvement while the other two sub-skills can not do so.From the micro perspective,three stages: motivating,enabling,and assessing are included in POA English teaching.In the part of motivating,discussion and classroom debates facilitate the development of analysis and evaluation.In the part of enabling,related language and discourse items help to improve the skill of explanation.In the part of assessing,the assessment form can guide students’ self-regulation.The paper provides suggestions for English teachers to launch quality-oriented writing lessons in junior high school.