A Research On The Application Of Process Approach In The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior High School

As one of the four basic skills of language learning, writing is the comprehensive embodiment of a language learner’s English learning capabilities. It can effectively promote the internalization of linguistic knowledge and help with the consolidation and acquisitions of the other three basic skills, thereby improving the overall language proficiency of the learners. To a large extent, the writing level of a learner can reflect his or her overall English learning level. In addition, the New English Curriculum Standards for senior high school has specific requirements for writing at all levels, from which we can see it attaches great importance to English writing.Nevertheless, the status quo of English writing teaching is not very optimistic. For a long time,"Product Approach" has been in use in senior high school English writing teaching; it focuses on the result of writing but ignoring the writing process, which goes against students’ cognition; as a result, despite teachers’ and students’ tremendous effort, there has been little improvement in English writing, so both of them are desperate to change this situation.In the past20years,"Process approach" has sprung up and begun to be implemented in English writing teaching. It originated in America’s first language teaching during the1960s and was pioneered by Northwestern University Professor Wallace Douglas. Scholars studying Second Language Teaching (SLT) in the80s such as Americans Raimes and Zamel, and British Hedge advocated applying process approach to SLT. Domestic researchers discovered in recent years that this kind of teaching had become one of the mainstream paradigms of Western teaching of writing (Yang Yonglin,2005). This approach believes that writing is a repetitive behavior of "thinking-writing-revising-rethinking, a process that is" generated "and" cooperative "rather than a one-way one(Zamel,1983). The whole writing process can be divided into different stages according to students’ cognition, namely, pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. Its feasibility and effectiveness has been verified in college English writing teaching, but few such researches have ever been done in senior high school English teaching. Is it equally effective in improving English writing teaching in senior high school, especially in those classes where students’English writing capabilities are poor in general? In order to answer this question, an empirical research was conducted in this study. Different from traditional researches on process approach, this experiment takes into account the real situation of students’ poor writing abilities, and the training of basic writing knowledge was implemented during the process and model essays were integrated into the writing process.Therefore, we can say this process approach has been modified to some extent.This study attempts to prove these two hypotheses:1) If the author applies process approach to English writing teaching in the school, students’ interest in writing will be increased.2) If the author applies process approach to English writing teaching in the school, students’ writing ability will be improved.95students of two parallel classes in Grade Two in the author’s school participated in this experiment; process approach was adopted in the experimental class, while product approach continued to be used in the controlled class; three tools were adopted in this experiment:two questionnaires used to reflect the changes of students’ interest in English writing before and after the experiment;10composition exercises during the experiment as well as two final-term exams before and after the experiment. After the16-week long experiment, the author collected the experimental data and analyzed them, and the result has confirmed the two hypotheses. On one hand, students’ interest in writing has been greatly improved in the experimental class, what’s more, the process approach has been well received and given full recognition; on the other hand, compared with controlled class, students’scores in writing in the experimental class has also seen great progress. Their writing ability, especially on the aspects of the enrichment of content and the organization of article, has been improved significantly.Of course, no approach is perfect; only those which can be fully integrated into the real teaching situation can promote writing teaching effectively. Hopefully this research can give inspirations to English writing teaching in senior high schools and help English teachers better understand and apply "process approach" in their teaching practice.