An Experimental Study On The Application Of Production-oriented Approach To Continuation Task Teaching In Senior High School

As a new test component in the National Matriculation Entrance Test(NMET)in Zhejiang Province,the continuation task which integrates reading and writing plays an important role in examining senior high school students' key competencies for English as a foreign language.While,the task also brings challenges to both teachers' English teaching and students' English learning.Recently,Production-oriented Approach(POA)is widely applied in English teaching at the tertiary level and abundant research findings have proved its positive effects on productive language skills.However,there is a lack of experimental studies which apply POA to senior high school English teaching.Especially,there is no study that applies POA to senior high school continuation task teaching.Therefore,the present study intends to apply POA to senior high school continuation task teaching and puts forward two research questions: 1)What are the POA's effects on senior high school students' attitudes towards continuation task learning? 2)What are the POA's effects on senior high school students' continuation task writing competence?The present study is an experimental study.A 14-week teaching experiment on continuation task has been conducted in two parallel classes of Z Senior High School which is a first-class senior high school in Zhejiang Province.The POA is adopted in the experimental class(EC)which consists of 48 students,while the traditional readingwriting teaching model is applied in the control class(CC)which is composed of 48 students as well.In order to investigate POA's effects on senior high school students' attitudes towards continuation task learning,questionnaires,interviews and classroom observation are used,and the data collected by questionnaires are further analyzed by means of Microsoft Excel.Moreover,tests and text analysis are applied to explore POA's effects on senior high school students' continuation task writing competence,and the test scores are analyzed via RStudio.The findings of the present study are shown as follows.Firstly,POA evokes positive effects on senior high school students' attitudes towards continuation task learning.(1)POA can arouse students' learning interest and confidence in continuation task.After the teaching experiment,50% of the students express their preference for learning continuation task,60.5% of them show their confidence in continuation task writing and 70.8% of them appreciate the teacher's teaching of continuation task.(2)POA can improve students' behavioral intentions in and after class.Over 60% of them have initiatives in continuation task learning.(3)POA can stimulate students' overall motivation for continuation task learning.79.1% of them have integrative motivation for learning continuation task which means that their authentic needs for improving writing competence have been positively impacted.(4)POA can boost students' awareness of collaboration.About 60% of them can actively participate in collaborative activities including the Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment(TSCA)that is embodied in POA.Secondly,POA is helpful to enhance senior high school students' continuation task writing competence.(1)The results show that,before the teaching experiment,the difference between EC and CC in writing competence is not significant(P = 0.722 > 0.05).However,after the teaching experiment,there is a significant difference between the scores of EC and those of CC in post-test(P = 0.03359 < 0.05).Most importantly,a significant difference(P = 3.741e-06 < 0.05)between EC's pre-test scores and EC's post-test scores can be noticed as well.(2)In terms of the language in continuation task writing,the accuracy and variety at the vocabulary level,the accuracy at the sentence level have been improved,and students' flexible use of “with composite structure”,“participial construction” and some figures of speech can be seen,while their ability in properly applying more complex sentences should be further enhanced.(3)When it comes to the content of continuation task writing,students can focus on the content consistency and content richness.(4)As for the structure of continuation task writing,students can complete a continuation task in a more coherent and cohesive way by noticing the hidden logic among key words,sentences and paragraphs and by properly using cohesive devices.Based on the findings presented above,the present study provides the following suggestions for teachers and students.(1)Teachers should focus more on the integration of input and output in classroom teaching.(2)Teachers should create effective simulated contexts to further stir students' imagination and motivation for continuation task.(3)Teachers should try to improve their own continuation task writing competence as well.(4)Students should practice more to enhance their confidence in continuation task writing.(5)Students should take an active part in collaborative learning activities to activate more ideas for writing.(6)Students should value assessment and revision as useful ways to improve writing quality.The present study attempts to provide a feasible approach to ameliorate English continuation task teaching in senior high school.Those quantitative and qualitative results revealed in the teaching experiment have proved that POA is conducive to the promotion of students' continuation task writing competence and their attitudes towards continuation task learning.