An Experimental Study On The Application Of Production-oriented Approach To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

The development of society and economy raises higher requirements for education to promote learners' all-round development.Education should serve for learners and show lifelong influence for them.When it comes to foreign language learners,education ought to improve their psychological development except for intellectual development.In English teaching classes,teachers focus more on listening and reading teaching.Writing is usually be neglected.However,writing is an important way for students to express their ideas and integrate what they have learned.In junior high school,there are many problems in writing teaching.The problems lead to the current situation of students' writing level.Firstly,writing,as an output skill,is usually ignored in practical teaching.Secondly,lots of students may be afraid of English writing.They may generate the sense of anxiety when asked to complete writing tasks.Finally,there are many mistakes in students' writing which make the writing cannot be easily understood.All the problems need to be solved urgently.In 2014,Professor Wen Qiufang raised Production-oriented Approach(POA),which is put forward in accordance with Chinese current situation of English teaching.It follows the“output-input-output” model.Output is not neglected any longer.In recent years,many scholars and teachers applied POA in practical English teaching and proved that POA is beneficial for students to improve their English proficiency.In this research,the author attempts to apply POA to English writing teaching in junior high schools.The author conducted this experiment in the Forty-ninth Middle School in Shijiazhuang.The experiment lasts for about 16 weeks.There are 109 students from two parallel classes in Grade 7 participating in this experiment.All of them are almost in the same writing level in entrance examination.POA is applied in EC(the experimental class)while process approach is applied in CC(the control class).The two classes are taught by the same English teacher and at the same pace.The same textbook is used and the same homework is assigned.Except teaching methods,all the rest factors keep the same.Research instruments are composed of questionnaire,interview and test.Questionnaire and interview are used to test that if students' writing motivation can be improved.Test is used to check that whether students' writing proficiency can be improved.Research questions are presented as follows:1)Can the application of POA to English writing teaching improve students' English writing motivation?(Motivation will be measured from three dimensions: extrinsic motivation,intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy)2)Can the application of POA to English writing teaching improve students' English writing proficiency?(Proficiency will be measured from four aspects: content,grammar,vocabulary,and coherence.)According to the experiment,the author find that it is effective to apply POA to English writing teaching.On one hand,the application of POA is beneficial for students to improve their writing motivation,especially their extrinsic motivation and self-efficacy.On the other hand,the application of POA can contribute to promote students' writing proficiency.Enough input gives students confidence and motivates them to conduct writing.Output makes students produce sense of hunger and then devote themselves to writing.Consequently,POA can be applied to more researches about writing teaching in the future.Scholars and teachers should make full preparations and have a clear understanding of students' writing level before writing teaching in order to design suitable writing tasks for students.Therefore,they are able to make little progress through every writing task.