A Study On The Application Of "Production-oriented Approach" To English Writing In Junior High Schools

With the development of the economy and society,higher requirements for people' s foreign language are raised.Foreign language teaching in junior high schools--as an important stage should promote students' affective and intellectual development,and help students be ready for their further education and career.Besides,it should contribute to the development of economy and society.So foreign language teaching in junior high schools owns both cultural and social significance.As we all know,writing is the last link among the four basic skills--listening,speaking,reading and writing,and it is the most comprehensive skill which reflects students' comprehensive English competence.At the same time,writing is an important part at the senior high school entrance examination.According to the communicative needs and cognitive level of junior high school students,the “National English curriculum standards”(middle school part)was published in 2011,and it suggested that junior high school students should be able to:(1)gather and organize material according to the purpose of writing;(2)draft short letters and passages independently,and edit them with teachers' guidance;(3)use common linking devices to express oneself fluently and logically in writing;(4)write simple descriptions of people or things;(5)write simple paragraphs,instructions and explanations according to the given pictures or tables.It can be seen that English teaching and learning at junior high schools is a very important,which not only lays a solid foundation for the development of students' comprehensive language competence,but also creates favorable conditions for their future learning and development.However,there are many problems in the practice of teaching English writing in junior high schools because of various objective and subjective factors,which reduce the teaching effect.For most students,especially junior high school students,there are a series of problems,such as errors in expression,monotonous language structures,high writing anxiety and low writing confidence.And for many years,input has been over-stressed and output is almost ignored,and test-oriented teaching makes students with high scores but low ability.At the traditional English classroom in junior high schools,teachers do not pay much attention to writing or ignore it.Although writing is the key point and takes a lot scores in the exam,many students practice writing as finishing homework.Therefore,students' writing competence is hard to meet the requirements of the standard,which is an urgent problem to be solved.Aiming to solving the imbalance between input and output in English teaching,Professor Wen Qiufang of Beijing Foreign Studies University put forward the Production-oriented Approach(POA).Then many experts,scholars and teachers applied POA into practice,and proved its effectiveness on English writing teaching.Therefore,the author boldly assumes that the application of POA on English writing teaching in junior high schools can solve some existing problems,and will have good teaching effects.The author carried out a research on teaching English writing at the tenth Middle School in Shijiazhuang,and two parallel classes of Grade8 were chosen as experimental subjects.The experiment lasted for three months.During the experiment,two classes were taught by one teacher--the author and I kept same attitude towards the two classes,and used the same teaching materials.The difference is that the author adopted POA theory to teaching English writing at the experimental class while process approach at the control class.To test the influence of POA on students' writing competence,two tests were conducted before and after the experiment,and students compositions were scored according to Jacobs' descriptors score level criteria.To test the influence of POA on students' positive affective experience,questionnaire adapted from Lu Jiamei's assessment of affective goals of classroom teaching was employed.Besides,an interview was also conducted to gain some details about students' attitudes to the new teaching method.The data was collected and analyzed at the end of the experiment,,and the conclusions could be drawn as following:1.Compared with process approach,POA theory can improve the students' English writing competence;2.Compared with process approach,students can gain a positive affective experience at POA class.The experimental study of POA theory applied to English writing at junior high schools provides a solution to the imbalance between input and output,and improves teaching efficiency and students' writing ability.On the other hand,students can obtain positive affective experience at class.And the positive affective can help students maintain a high level motivation and raise their writing achievements.This experiment proves effectiveness of POA theory,and brings enlightenment to the English writing teaching at junior high schools.