Application Of The Process-Oriented Writing Approach In Senior High School English Teaching

Four language skills play important roles in composing language communicative ability. Among them, writing is an expressive skill, a process of information output, and the embodiment of students’ comprehensive language skills. Except that, writing is involved in other skills, including listening, speaking and reading, which also reflects students’ comprehensive language ability of using English. The improvement of writing skills can promote the internalization of language knowledge and the overall development of students’ listening, speaking and reading(Wang Chuming, et al, 2000). However, English writing teaching is not being taken seriously in the process of senior school English teaching. The previous college entrance examination grades show that students’ listening and reading skills have been improved gradually, but the improvement of students’ writing ability is not obvious and the scores in the writing part have not yet reached the corresponding requirements(Lei Qing, 2000). Therefore, changing the traditional product-oriented writing approach is one of ways to solve the current writing teaching problems. What’s more, it is clearly stated in New English Curriculum Criteria in senior high school that writing is a kind of communicative ability to express and convey messages, and fostering students’ primary writing ability is one of English teaching aims(Education Administration, 2003). The New Criteria acclaim that the real ability of students’ using English in writing should also be developed, so more and more senior high school English teachers realize the importance of writing teaching.The process-oriented writing approach is applied to English writing teaching of Senior 1 in Guizhou Experimental High School in this thesis, so as to improve the skills of students’ English writing and teachers’ teaching effectively. The research questions are confirmed as follows: 1) Having applied the process-oriented writing approach, what changes do students’ attitudes have towards English writing? 2) How flexibly can the process-oriented writing approach be applied to senior high school English writing teaching? 3) Is the use of an English-Composition-Evaluating form helpful to improve students’ writing? If yes, to what extent?Two classes of Senior 1 in Guizhou Experimental High School were chosen as the research subjects and the effects of the process-oriented approach were studied in this experiment by adopting questionnaires, interviews, and three tests. The research results show that the process-oriented writing approach can improve students’ English writing ability and writing initiative, eliminate the fear of English writing and cultivate cooperation sense and positive emotional experience. Meanwhile, the use of the English-Composition-Evaluating form also promotes the improvement of students’ writing levels in the application process of the process-oriented writing approach.