The Application Of Process-Based Approach To English Writing Teaching In Higher Vocational Schools

Recently with the rapid development of economy, highervocational education has seen a vigorous development in its quantity,quality and overall reform process. Meanwhile, social needs forcompound talents have increased greatly, which determines thatpersonnel training objectives of higher vocational education are nowfacing higher requirements, especially the students’ English ability.Among the four basic skills of English, writing is a comprehensive skill,which manifests students’ overall ability in the language. Against thisbackground, it is necessary to explore a teaching method which issuitable for higher vocational English writing, thus to improve students’writing ability.In the past twenty years, the process-based approach has becomethe mainstream in second language teaching of writing. Theprocess-based approach emphasizes that writing is a cyclic process ofcreative thinking. It also emphasizes that in the process of writing,students should cooperate with each other in prewriting, drafting, peerreviewing and revising. In this way they can write good compositionsboth in content and structure. However, the process-based approachin China is still limited to theoretical studies. There is little empiricalresearch.In this research, the researcher adopted questionnaires,experimental contrast, classroom observation as the main researchmethods. This research was conducted in two classes from WuxiMachinery and Electron Higher Professional and Technical School andlasted one semester. In the experimental class, process-basedapproach was carried out in order to test the effectiveness andfeasibility of the approach in writing teaching of higher vocationalschools. After the experiment, the results show that the process-basedapproach is applicable in writing teaching in higher vocational schools.The approach not only promotes students’ writing ability, but alsoimproves their attitudes towards English writing. At the same time,students’ interest and confidence in writing has increased greatly, too.