An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Project-based Learning On College English Writing Teaching

English writing teaching plays an important role in college English teaching.Effective writing teaching can not only develop students' writing skills,but also help them consolidate their English knowledge,cultivate their language competence and arouse interests in learning English.However,there exists some difficulties in college English writing teaching and learning.Teachers have encountered with some problems while teaching and students also have difficulties in the process of learning.The theoretical foundations of Project-based Learning(PBL)involve constructivism,multiple intelligence theory and Dewey's theory of learning by doing.Markham(2011)described PBL as “Students not only learn knowledge and elements of the core curriculum,but also apply what they know to solve authentic problems and produce results that matter.” PBL has been widely applied in the field of English teaching recently by some researchers.This study aims to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of the application of PBL in teaching college English writing.This research is based on the following two questions.1.What are the effects of project-based learning on college English writing?2.What's the change of students' attitudes toward English writing after the application of project-based learning?This research is carried out in Shenyang XX University.Two parallel English classes from grade two,which served as the control class and the experimental class,were chosen to participate in this research.The whole research lasts one semester.During this research,several research instruments,including questionnaires,interviews and tests,are used for the experiment and the results are scientifically analyzed.The implementation of PBL in college English writing teaching have achievements in the students' writing proficiency and their attitudes toward English writing.After the research,this study illustrates that the PBL is an effective and significant way to improve the writing proficiency and learning attitudes of college students.