A Research Into The Effects Of PBL On The English Writing Achievements Of Senior High School Students

How to improve students' writing achievement in senior high school has always been a big challenge.In traditional teaching,teachers are short of scientific teaching plans to direct students in writing,and students are short of peer discussion about English writing.What's worse,assessment from teachers are empty and similar.As a result,students will lose interest and passion for English writing.Problem-based Learning(hereafter referred to as PBL)focuses on the students' learning in the process of solving real problems by themselves.Based on Dewey's educational thoughts and Cooperative Learning Theory,this study chose Class 1 and Class 4 of a high school in Jiangsu Province as the subjects of the research,attempting to investigate the current situation and students' interest in English writing in high school.Questionnaire,experiment and interview were carried out so as to explore whether PBL teaching method would have effects on students' academic performance and their interest in English writing.The research has reached some findings as follows:1)The main difficulty in English writing lies in that most students have no idea how to express in English and can't use grammar and sentence structure correctly.After finishing their writing,most of them neglect reflection and peer communication.2)PBL teaching method helps students master English writing skills and strategies as well as improve their English writing performance.According to the experimental data,the independent sample T test shows that there are significant differences between the two classes.Obviously,Class Four made greater progress than Class One.3)PBL teaching method focuses on students' ability to cooperate and explore in English writing.PBL teaching method cultivates students' interest in English writing,especially in the students with weak foundation.Besides,students are not so afraid of English writing as they were before.In short,PBL teaching method plays a very important role in improving students' English writing ability and developing their competence in self-learning and problem solving.It meets the need of English writing teaching in high school,and this method is worthy to be applied widely in the Chinese classroom.The empirical study was carried out in 2 classes of a high school in Jiangsu Province.Although some positive research results have been attained,there are still some drawbacks.In the future study,the author will bring these problems into focus and pay more attention to the application of PBL teaching method in high school,aiming to stimulate students'learning interest as well as explore a more effective high school English writing method.