An Experimental Study Of Senior High School English Continuation Task Teaching Based On Production-oriented Approach

In 2021,Jiangsu province joined other six provinces in adopting National Matriculation English Test I as the English test for its senior high school graduates.Continuation task,a writing question type which requires students continue 150-word writing after reading given materials and sentences to make the whole passage logical,connective and completed,thus made its debut in NMET I in 2021.With the introduction of continuation task comes challenges for teachers and students in Jiangsu.What teaching method should teachers select to teach continuation task?Will senior high school students experience writing anxiety in continuation task?In order to solve the problem of "separation between learning and using" in English teaching in China,Professor Wen Qiufang proposed Production-oriented Approach.POA,which values both input and output,is confirmed to be effective in English writing teaching through several teaching practices.Therefore,under the background of new question type in new college entrance examination,this study applies POA to senior high school continuation task teaching and tries to address the following two questions:(1)In what ways does POA influence senior high school students’ continuation task writing performance?(2)In what ways does POA influence senior high school students’ writing anxiety in continuation task?This study took the 80 students in two parallel classes of the second grade in a senior high school of Taizhou as research subjects to participate in the eight-week teaching experiment.With the same teaching content and teacher,POA was adopted in EC’s continuation task teaching and TBLT was used to teach continuation task in CC.Pre-test continuation task and second language writing anxiety inventory were conducted in the first week and post-test continuation task and second language writing anxiety inventory were conducted in the eighth week to answer the two research questions.The collected data were analyzed with SPSS 26.0 and the major findings of this study are as follows:(1)POA can effectively improve senior high school students’ continuation task writing performance.As for the three dimensions of continuation task writing performance,POA can effectively improve senior high school students’ continuation task language and content performance while has no obvious effect on students’ continuation task structure performance.(2)POA can effectively alleviate senior high school students’ writing anxiety in continuation task.As for the three dimensions of writing anxiety,POA can effectively alleviate senior high school students’ somatic anxiety,avoidance behavior and cognitive anxiety.The results of this study implicate that,first,language output must be emphasized by teachers in English teaching.POA values both input and output so it can be applicated not only in senior high school general English writing teaching,but also in continuation task teaching.Second,when implementing motivating stage of POA,teachers should select interesting and communicative contexts for students to stimulate their background knowledge,raise their interests and alleviate their writing anxiety in continuation task.Third,when implementing POA,assessment,not limited to be provided in assessing stage,can be offered by teachers at any stage.