An Experimental Study Of The Process-writing Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

As is known to us, English writing, as one of the four basic skills, is of great importance, especially for the students in senior high school. However, English writing teaching still hesitated at the stage of traditional product approach. Teachers in senior high school would rather focus on the finished product instead of the writing process. As a result, lacking proper guidance in the writing process, students are always at a loss when it comes to writing in English. Gradually students lose interest and their writing proficiency is far from satisfactory.To improve the situation, English writing teaching has experienced dramatic changes in the last several tens of years. Writing theory has been gradually enriched through a lot of researches and practice. A series of effective approaches to English writing teaching has been formed, among which the process approach has become widely accepted in many foreign countries. A great number of foreign scholars do a lot of study to compare the process approach with the product approach, finding that the process approach is more beneficial to improving students’ interest and English writing proficiency.Therefore, it is very significant for the researcher to conduct this experimental study by applying the process approach to English writing teaching in senior high school in China. This research aims at proving that the process approach is effective on stimulating students’ interest and improving students’ writing proficiency, that is, testing the following two hypotheses:(1) The process approach can stimulate the students’ interest in English writing in senior high school.(2) The process approach can improve the English writing proficiency of students in senior high school.In order to do this research, the researcher carried out an experiment of one year in English writing teaching for students in Funing No.1 Middle School in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. Two classes the researcher taught were chosen as the experimental class and the controlled class respectively.Before the experiment, the researcher organized a pre-writing test using the writing part from NMET in 2014 to make sure that students in two paralleled classes had the similar writing proficiency. Then the research made a survey about students’ interest in English writing and students’ writing strategies.During the experiment the researcher applied the process approach to the experimental class. According to the marking criteria of NMET, the compositions which were written by students in the process of the experiment were graded and the scores were used to make an assessment of the students’ writing proficiency.After the experiment, the researcher also made a survey using the same questionnaire to see whether there were some changes in students’ interest in English writing and English writing strategies. Another post-writing test using the writing part from NMET in 2015 was organized. At last, the researcher analyzed the data to find out whether there were some improvements in student’s English writing interest and writing proficiency.The major findings of the experiment indicate that in senior high school, the process approach can be used to stimulate the students’ interest in English writing and perfect the English writing proficiency of students.