An Explorative Study On The Application Of Cognitive-process Model In Senior High English-Writing Class

The cultivation of English-writing skills is nowadays the main task of English teaching in middle schools. Students' writing skill is an important quality standard for both English teaching and learning. In fact, English-writing is one of the most difficult aspects either for students or for teachers.Through research work, the author finds there are some problems in the teaching of English writing, which mainly are reflected in two respects, namely the teaching approaches and the way of assessment of students' products. Problems also exist in students, the principal body of teaching, among which the poor grasp of basic language knowledge, the negative influence from native language writing, and the lack of genre knowledge, passage structure and adequate writing strategies etc.Based on the above findings, the author puts forward a Cognitive-process Model in teaching English writing. The Cognitive-process Model refers to the writing teaching adopting Process Writing Approach and Cognitive Writing Model, and meta-cognition writing strategies training on the students as well. In recent years, Process Approach and Cognitive Writing Model have gained adherents. Every approach has its own advantages and disadvantages, though. The model is a synthesis of these two approaches adopting their individual advantages and manipulation of writing strategies. This teaching model includes the essential ideas that the writing class recognizes: accelerating knowledge about language, readers and genre knowledge, passage structure(as in Cognitive Writing Model), and skills in using language (as in process approach). It also emphasizes training of knowledge strategy and monitor strategies—planning, evaluation and revision, which is based on Hayes and Flower's cognitive model for writing, one fruit of the research on writing process in the field of modern cognitive psychology.Contrast experimental method is adopted in the research. Students of 2 Senior III classes are randomly arranged to study. One class is referred to as the experimental, the Cognitive-process Model utilized; the other is referred to as the contrast, the traditional product approach adopted. The process of the experiment is recorded in forms of students' practice writing and Peer Assessment tables; weekly diaries as well as interviews. All the data are processed with the help of SPSS for windows 11.5 and Microsoft Excel. The results show that the Cognitive-process Model has greater effects on improvement of the students' writing skills than the traditional product approach. They also indicate that different range of improvement happens among groups with high scores, medium scores and low scores according to writing performance. The group with low scores does not achieve noticeable improvement while the other two groups accomplish remarkably. Meanwhile, the students do better in manipulating writing strategies and can apply them in the similar study of other subjects. They have developed their interest in English and cultivated communicative and cooperative abilities greatly.