The Process-oriented Approach In English Writing And Its Cultivation Of College Student's Learner Autonomy

With the reform of college English course, the objectives, philosophy and models of Chinese EFL teaching have been deeply changing. So college students are required to have higher language proficiency; it is also a challenge for the English teachers in our country. The New College English Curriculum Requirements issued in 2007 states that college English instruction should focus on the cultivation of the students'learner autonomy. The traditional teaching mode should be changed. College English teaching is not only to input knowledge to students, but also to foster their skills on the application of knowledge, and excavate their potential in order to promote their learner autonomy.Writing, as one of the efficient ways to measure students'comprehensive English ability, has attracted more attention in the field of English pedagogy. English writing instruction has been mature in some foreign countries. For example, the process-oriented approach has been used abroad and achieved good results. But in China, the traditional product-oriented approach is still the major method. Teachers highlight the writing products and ignore the writing process, resulting in the fact that students lose their writing interests, even are afraid of writing. Although some teachers have done studies on the process-oriented approach, few have analyzed the correlation between this approach and learner autonomy. Therefore, the author applies the process-oriented approach to writing instruction, studies the effects on the cultivation of learner autonomy by putting forward the following research questions:1) Is the process-oriented approach effective to improve students'writing ability?2) Is the process-oriented approach helpful to strengthen students'interest and confidence in writing?3) Can the process-oriented approach promote students'learner autonomy?The first part of the thesis is the introduction of background and significance of this study.Then the thesis reviews the process-oriented approach, learner autonomy, and the current studies of these two strategies at home in literature review. In chapter three, the problems, causes and the correlation between the process-oriented approach and learner autonomy are analyzed. In chapter four, the research design and methodology are presented. A quasi-experimental research (non-equivalent control group design) is designed in the quantitative part of the study and a multiple case study is adopted in the qualitative part. The independent variable in the study is the application of the process-oriented approach. Its presence may affect the following dependent variables: the learners'writing proficiency and the acquisition of their learner autonomy. The subjects are 82 first-year non-English majors of two intact classes of Hebei University; one class is the experimental group and the other is the control group. The focal participants in the interview in qualitative part of the research are decided through purposive sampling. The instruments used in the research are questionnaire, pretest and posttest, classroom observation, log and interview. The research procedure consists of four steps. Step 1 (pre-experiment) investigates students'beliefs on learner autonomy and their current writing attitudes and status quo. All the subjects finish a questionnaire, a writing pretest and focal participants are interviewed. Step 2 provides a 10-week process-oriented approach intervention for the experimental group, which consists of prewriting, drafting, peer reviewing, revising, teacher's feedback and publishing, while the product-oriented approach is used in the control group. In step 3 (post-experiment), after the experimental group's 10-week intervention, all the subjects finish the questionnaire and posttest; the focal participants join another interview. In step 4, the data are collected and analyzed. In chapter five, by comparing the data of the experimental group and the control group with the help of SPSS, the research questions are answered: the process-oriented approach can improve students'writing proficiency, promote their writing interests, and increase their learner autonomy. Finally, the conclusion part reports the major findings and limitations of the research, states the pedagogical implications, and proposes the suggestions for future study.