A Study Of The Effects Of Production-Oriented Approach On Senior High School Students’ English Writing

There is no denying that writing,which is known as the vital representation of students’ expressive skills,plays an irreplaceable role in English learning.Though as one of the key elements in the English College Entrance Examination and daily teaching,writing is regarded as the most difficult item by a great many teachers and students.This study is intended to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of Production-oriented Approach(POA)in senior high school English writing class.To be specific,the following three research questions are addressed:(1)What are the effects of the Production-oriented Approach on senior high school students’ English writing complexity?(2)What are the effects of the Production-oriented Approach on senior high school students’ English writing accuracy?(3)What are the effects of the Production-oriented Approach on senior high school students’ English writing fluency?A total of 84 Grade One students from two parallel classes in a key high school in Hangzhou,Zhejiang Province are determined as research subjects.Among them,one class(42 students)serves as Experimental Class(EC)and uses the POA to teach writing;the other class is Control Class(CC)(42 students)and adopts the traditional teaching method.According to their English high school entrance examination scores and pre-test results,there is no significant difference in the English proficiency and writing complexity,accuracy,and fluency of the two classes before the teaching experiment.After the experiment,post-test is conducted and totally six random students from high,intermediate and low-proficiency level in EC are selected as interviewees.The results are concluded as follows:(1)The POA has a positive effect on improving senior high school students’ English writing complexity,and it has a better effect on high-proficiency students compared to traditional teaching method;(2)The POA has no obvious effect on improving senior high school students’ English writing accuracy,because it has a positive effect on improving high-proficiency students’ accuracy and a negative effect on intermediate-proficiency and low-proficiency students’ accuracy,which offsets each other;(3)The POA can improve senior high school students’ English writing fluency,especially high-proficiency and low-proficiency students,but it has no obvious advantages over traditional teaching method on the whole.This study also provides some pedagogical implications:(1)English teachers should select an authentic topic which has communicative meaning in the real context and make good use of production to maximize students’ writing passion and involvement;(2)English teachers should provide sufficient reading materials to offer students scaffolding in language,idea,and discourse structure;(3)English teachers should attach great importance to the assessing process during the writing instruction;(4)English teachers should keep an eye on the learning problems and requirements of students across different proficiency levels and adjust in time.