An Action Research On Teaching Of College English Writing Against The Background Of "Postmethod" Pedagogy

“The Postmethod Era”is to break the limits of traditional teaching method toadvocate constructing a new bottom-up teaching methodology framework fitting tothe real teaching situation, with stress on teacher autonomy. It is first put forward byProfessor Kumaradivelu in the late20thcentury, as one new trend for foreign languageteaching research, and requires teachers to reconstruct the concept of languageteaching and teacher education. Postmethod concept, however, remains at theintroduction stage in our country. Rare empirical research were conducted under thepostmethod framework. While there is a large number of papers about the teaching ofcollege English writing, most research emphasize on the validation of traditionalresearch methods and the factors influencing students’ individual development, yetignore the innovation of existing methods. Therefore, postmethod theory can promotethe development of English writing teaching, and help researchers to find effectiveteaching plan suited for concrete classrooms.Based on Postmethod theory, the author carried out a fifteen-month actionresearch on the college English writing teaching in an independent college in Taiyuan.The research combined multiple teaching theories, such as process writing,cooperative learning, constructivism teaching, and communicative teaching methodand so on, trying to construct particular teaching framework for the class. Theultimate goals for the research is to lead the class to achieve the periodical progress,help individuals to grasp and reinforce the basic adoption of writing strategies,promote the teacher to obtain professional development. On the basis of the research background, the thesis depicts the literature reviewof changing trend of TESOL, the development of action research, as well as collegeEnglish writing teaching in chapter two. Chapter three summarizes the theoreticalframework, including all the teaching strategies involved in the action research.Chapter four gives a detailed description of the whole process of the action research,covering the discovery of question, planning, practice, reflection, and modifying plan.As for research methodology, both quantitative and qualitative analysis are used inanalyzing students’ writing text, contrasting Pre-and Post-Tests, one-on-oneconference, classroom observation, students’ feedback, case analysis, teachingreflection and so on.The result shows that the process of writing combined with cooperativelearning can help students plan writing content and organize the discourse structure.Multiple revision devices intervene to improve the students’ awareness of theimportance of revision and promote individual autonomy; Meanwhile, writingconference can help to correct students’ fossilized errors and enhance teachers’understanding of students individual differences; Reading-writing integrated teachingcombined with recitation input, is an effective way to accelerate the development oflanguage complexity. The study also finds that the students’ reciting grades have asignificant positive correlation with the post-test of writing, which approves Deng’s(2007) finding that recitation input can enhance students’writing ability.The research obtains the following enlightenment for English writing teaching:to encourage teachers to conduct theoretical teaching practice, to settle leveledteaching targets, to innovate classroom teaching methods, to pay more attention tostudents’ individual features and different requirements. In addition, the relationbetween mnemonics and second language acquisition can be further explored.