The Application Of The Process Approach To English Writing In Senior High School

It is clearly stated in The New Criterion of English Course in Senior High School that writing is a communicative ability to write and convey messages. It is one of the aims of the English teaching to foster students’writing ability. However, teachers and students are always complaining about the boring English writing class. Therefore how to teach writing effectively has been the issue that teachers and researchers are concerned about.So far, two writing approaches are mainly adopted in China. They are the product approach and the process approach. In the traditional product approach, the final products are always evaluated in terms of spelling, grammar and sentences, etc. Under such a product approach, students are required to write many compositions, which then are simply graded and corrected by teachers.The process approach is an approach which helps students to work on multiple-drafts of a piece of work before it is finished. It focuses on how writers write, putting more emphasis on the process of writing than the final product. Writing is viewed as a recursive process of problem-solving, during which students are engaged in many activities, such as brainstorming, multiple drafting, group cooperation, and revising etc. The process approach stresses the creativity of the individual writer, aiming to develop students’writing ability. Students are the center of writing and teachers are only facilitators for students’writing.Based on the above view, the author proposes hypothesis that the process approach can stimulate students’enthusiasm in English writing and enhance students’ writing skill in Senior High School. To testify the hypothesis, an experiment was carried out in two classes, and the subjects are100students of Grade two from Jinghai No.1Senior High School, Tianjin. The experiment lasted a semester, during which the process approach was adopted in the Experimental Class while the product approach was used in the Control Class. The author has gained the data through tests, questionnaires and interviews, and then analyzed the data and made some reflections on it. The results of the experiment have shown that the process approach can make students in the Experimental Class study more actively and enhance students’ability in English writing.