The Research On The Application Of Webquest To College English Writing Teaching

English writing, as a productive skill in language learning, possesses a very essential role in college Englishteaching. As Wilga M.Rivers (1986) mentioned,“In the recent past writing has, at best, been regarded as ahandmaiden of the other three skills”①. However, as a matter of fact, the teaching results are not consistent withthe original respective goals. Zhang Zaixin (1995) said that “it is an indisputable fact that students havedifficulties in language writing”.Compared with other three skills including listening, speaking and reading,writing is considered to be the most difficult skills to cultivate. Meanwhile, the instruction of writing hasencountered many difficulties and challenges. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a new teaching method forcollege English writing teaching to improve students’ writing competence.The present research, based on the constructivist learning theory，from qualitative and quantitative researchperspectives, with the help of Questionnaire, pre-and post-tests and interview, tries to explore1)whether theWebQuest writing teaching model is more effective in improving students’ writing achievements than those withproduct approach;2) whether the webQuest writing teaching model is more effective in reinforcing students’interest and motivation than those through the product approach;3)whether the WebQuest writing teachingmodel has a positive effect on cultivating students’ autonomous learning ability. All the data are gathered from120non English majors from school of public administration in Gansu Political Science and Law Institute.The results of the research indicate that the webQuest writing teaching model can be used in collegeEnglish writing instruction. Compared with product approach, the webQuest writing teaching model is moreeffective in attracting students’ interest and motivation in learning English because it provides moreopportunities of communication and cooperation to them. As a result, their writing competence andachievements are also improved respectively. What’s more, the study shows that it is also good for cultivatingstudents’ autonomous learning ability. In addition, some existing problems are also found out in the study such ashow to manage various groups effectively and how to spread this model to other college while there isn’t internetenvironment, etc.This thesis is made up of six chapters. The thesis begins with the introduction. It introduces the background,significance of the study and organization of this thesis. The second chapter is a literature review, which firstgives a general description of the definition, history and structure of WebQuest, then shows previous researcheson WebQuest at home and abroad, at last previous research on college writing instruction and its limitations arelisted. Chapter three illustrates the theoretical framework of this study. Three main theories are provided to support WebQuest teaching and a WebQuest model designed for college English writing is given. Chapter four isthe methodology. In this part, it first presents the research questions, participants and the setting. Then itintroduces the research instruments of the study including questionnaires, pre-and post-test, interview and so on.After that, the research procedures and instruction design in experimental class and the controlled class are givenspecifically. Chapter five mainly introduces the major findings of the research. The author provides analysis anddiscussion of the data. The last chapter is the conclusion of the thesis. In this part, the author summarizes themajor findings from the survey and suggestions in order to promote the effective use of WebQuest in EFLwriting, then discusses the limitation of the study as well as gives some suggestions for future study.