Research On Improving Students, English Wirting Ability In Senior Middschool By Applying Situational And Task-based Teaching Approaches

In the past10years private senior middle schools in Qinghai province havedeveloped very quickly, but the quality of teaching and learning are unsatisfactory,especially in English. English writing is the skill relatively more difficult to acquirethan the other three skills of English, particularly for those students in private schoolswhose general English levels are low. The author looks forward to addressing theproblems of the teaching and learning of English writing by the application of theSituational Teaching Approach (STA) and Skehan’s model of task-based teaching inSenior grade one. There are many researches on Situational Teaching Approach andSkehan’s model, but very few on syntheses of the two approaches to improvelow-level students’ writing ability in private senior middle schools.Synthesis of the two approaches allows English writing teaching not only toconcentrate on language communication functions, activating English writing classesand promoting students’ nonintellectual factors, but also to take care of languageforms; therefore, it will improve students’ English writing ability through feeling andusing the target language in the classes. The author chose two parallel classes ofGrade1in Qinghai Siyuan Middle School and carried out a semester-long experimentabout ten weeks. One class served as the experimental class (EC), and the other onewas the control class (CC). In EC STA and TBA were applied and in CC ProductTeaching Approach applied. Before the study, the author analyzed writing scores ofthe last final exam, conducted questionnaires, interviews and writing pre-tests tounderstand the students’ general conditions of English, English writing and learning,and hence, decided whether these two classes could be chosen for this study. After thestudy, the pre and post questionnaires were analyzed through a quantitative method,so were the scores of the writing pre-test, midterm test and writing post-test. Analysisof the data indicated that the synthesis of a Situational Teaching Approach andTask-based Teaching Approach had a better influence on students’ non intelligencefactors and writing ability.The thesis consists of six Chapters. Chapter one is a brief introduction to thebackground, objectives and significance, and layout of the study. Chapter two is theliterature review. It gives a brief introduction to the research status of the SituationalTeaching Approach and the Task-based Teaching Approach at home and abroad,elements of the Situational Teaching Approach and the Task-based TeachingApproach, writing. Chapter three is about the current English writing teaching and students’ writing situations in the private senior middle schools concluded fromanalyzing results of the questionnaires, interviews and scores of writing pre-test inboth classes where the study was going to be implemented and put forward thesynthesis of Situational Teaching Approach and Task-based Teaching Approach.Chapter four introduces the experiment in detail. Chapter five is about the datacollections and analyses. Chapter six introduces the major findings, and also listspedagogical implications and limitations. And then suggestions are presented forfuture researchers’ reference and further study.