3Is Versus 3Ps

It is well acknowledged that writing has long been regarded as one of the most important aspects of teaching English as a foreign language. However, current English writing course for English major students still adheres to a traditional top-down (deductive) pattern of teacher-centered and textbook-focused teaching, which works with low efficiency in developing students'English writing ability.Accordingly, the 3I's approach was adapted in this study to the instruction of the writing course for college English major students, which is in line with data-driven learning (DDL). DDL does not teach a language feature, but presents learners with evidence and asks them to make hypotheses and draw conclusion, which advocates the pattern of student-centered and bottom-up (inductive) learning.62 college students (second-year English majors) from two intact classes participated in this study. One class formed the experimental class receiving the 3I's approach.27 students from this class were selected as subjects of the experimental group. In contrast, the other class served as the control class, taught with the 3P's approach. Similarly,27 students sampled from this class formed the control group of subjects. All the other conditions were equal for the two groups (and the two classes as well):the same teacher, textbooks and length of class time, etc.Data were collected from two writing tests:the pretest and the posttest. The writing tests were scored by three raters. Then statistic procedures of 2-related-samples non-parametric test, k-related-samples non-parametric tests, one-way ANOVA, independent-samples t tests, ANCOVA were employed to analyze the data.The results showed that the 3I's approach indeed had a significantly better effect on improving the Chinese-speaking college English majors'writing proficiency than did the 3P's approach. Besides, the 3I's approach was significantly more effective than the 3P's approach in teaching English writing to poor Chinese college English majors.The findings of the study have certain pedagogical implications for class teaching of English writing in China. They suggest that the application of the 3I's approach will not only bring change to the teaching materials of the writing course, but also promote students'autonomous learning in the classroom.