A Study On The Process Approach To Teaching Senior High School Students' English Writing

Writing, a major item in the College Entrance Examination, is one of the most important language skills, which can reflect students' comprehensive language ability. Teachers have laid stress on the practice of English writing teaching, especially with the new reform of National English Curriculum for Senior high schools and new marking criteria of NMET. With the reform carried out in high schools in Hebei Province, English teaching has started to implement the experiment under the guidance of the New English Curriculum in the autumn semester of 2009. The trend has been reinforced. However, as a matter of fact, the results of a pre-test and a pre-questionnaire about senior English writing teaching suggest that the current situation of English writing in senior high schools is far from satisfaction. Students have no interest or confidence in English writing, which urges English teachers to ponder, such as how to transfer the focus from teaching English writing through teacher's explanation to training the students'writing ability through their writing pratice so as to make the writing class full of vitality and allow students to participate in the whole process of writing, and so on. Thus, the process of English writing teaching should be optimized to arouse students'interest and raise their confidence in English writing.In order to solve the problems above, the author adopts the process approach to senior English writing teaching according to the requirements of the National English Curriculum, based on Vygotsky's social constructivism and the theory of ZPD—the zone of proximal development based on the information obtained from Questionnaires.The present study seeks to verify and discover whether the process approach can contribute to senior students'writing efficiency and ability and whether the process approach can increase their confidence and interest in English writing.The subjects from two classes in Linzhang No. 2 Senior High School in Hebei Province take part in the four-month writing teaching experiment, during which the author performs the process approach to English writing teaching in the experimental class and programs it as the following six steps: prewriting, first draft, peer reviewing, rewriting, teacher's feedback and sharing. Six instruments, a pre-test, a post-test, a pre-questionnaire, a post-questionnaire, classroom experiment and an interview about writing, are carried out to collect the information for later analysis. The collected data are analyzed by SPSS 17.0Conclusion is drawn as follows with results analyzed carefully: The process approach is an approach to"stress the creativity of the individual writer, and pays attention to the development of writing practice."(Tribble,1996), which leads students to work on multiple-drafts of a composition before it reviews its final product. Apart from this, the process approach is effective in helping students raise their interest and confidence in English writing. They are ready to join in English writing activities, enjoying its process. Above all, it can improve students'writing abilities.Though the experiment has been proved successful, the process approach has its limitations. Particularly in the real English writing teaching practice, it displays its own weaknesses—time consuming and there exists a limitation of subjects and duration in this research. However, the author would prefer that the results and analyses of this study should be valuable reference for those who are contemplating the implementation of the process approach in their English writing teaching course and that efforts in this research can make great contributions to the undergoing reform in senior English writing teaching.In a word, the process approach is effective in English writing teaching and can develop the writing abilities of students in senior high schools. So it deserves a further try.