A Study On The Effectiveness Of Interactive English Writing Teaching In Junior High Schools

Writing,one of the basic language skills,is a powerful instrument to enhance comprehension,assist learning and facilitate communication with others.However,some students may have low English writing motivation and not perform well in English writing.Proposed by Palincsar and Brown(1984),interactive teaching emphasizes the subject status of students and allows students to complete writing tasks through different kinds of interaction in the writing process,thus finally arousing students’ interest in writing and improving their writing ability.Based on this,the present study tries to explore the impact of interactive English writing teaching in junior high schools.Guided by the constructivism learning theory,interactive hypothesis,and communicative competence theory,the present study attempts to address the following two research questions:(1)What is the impact of interactive English writing teaching on junior high school students’ motivation for writing?(2)What is the impact of interactive English writing teaching on junior high school students’ performance in writing? The participants of this study are 98 students from two parallel classes of Grade Eight in a junior high school in Huaiji,Zhaoqing.Interactive writing teaching was applied in the experimental class while the product approach was implemented in the control class.The experiment lasted for 16 weeks.The research instruments included the writing motivation questionnaire,pre-test,post-test,and interview.Findings of this study show that interactive writing teaching is effective in learners’ English writing.On the one hand,it has significantly improved students’ motivation for English writing including their mastery goals,self-efficacy,writing beliefs,and affect.On the other hand,this teaching mode has enhanced students’ writing performance,because students in the experimental class make more significant progress than those in the control class,especially on the content and cohesion of their writing.Therefore,it’s reasonable for teachers to apply interactive writing teaching in English writing classes.