An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Joint Production On English Writing Of Senior High School Students

English writing has always been an important aspect of English proficiency,and it is a hot topic of extensive research in the field of applied linguistics in recent years.English writing and Chinese writing have both commonalities and differences.The domestic English writing class emphasizes the“writing process”and requires students to continually modify and polish under the aid of teachers or peers in order to ensure the accuracy of the language forms.As a new teaching means,joint production enables teachers and students to pay attention to the form and function of language in the process of meaning negotiation.In addition,joint production integrates both written and oral corrective feedback and maximizes the effectiveness of the collaboration.Based on the interaction hypothesis and social constructivist theory,this paper empirically applies joint production to senior high school English writing classrooms.The following two questions are discussed through an empirical study:1)What effects does joint production have on senior high school students' English writing strategies?2)What effects does joint production have on senior high school students' English writing accuracy?This empirical study lasts 3 months,and selects two parallel classes with equivalent English proficiency in a senior high school in Changsha city as the research subjects.The experimental class receives joint production as an instructional treatment while the control class does not.There is no difference between the two classes in terms of reading tasks and writing assignments.An English proficiency test and a writing proficiency test are conducted for the two classes before the experiment,and the writing strategy questionnaire is distributed in the experimental class.During the experiment,the experimental class receives 8 sessions of joint production.Students are required to submit a composition every two weeks.In all,6 writings are collected from each student from both classes.After the experiment,the same writing strategy questionnaire is given out again to the experimental class.Then the data of two proficiency tests,writing assignments and questionnaire are statistically analyzed to make a comparison.In this paper,the data of the first week,the sixth week and the twelfth week are selected,which represent three temporal segments of the experiment,namely pre-treatment,while-treatment and post-treatment.According to the analysis of writing strategy questionnaires and writing accuracy through SPSS 22.0,this study can make the following conclusions:1)By comparing pre-questionnaire with post-questionnaire in theexperimental class,it is found that the joint production as an instructional treatment significantly contributes to the improving frequency of students' writing strategies.Specifically,joint production has a significant difference in conception and organization strategy,linguistic strategy,compensation strategy,dictionary strategy and social/affective strategy.Surprisingly,there is no significant difference in resource and management strategies.2)Through the comparison of the writing accuracy between the two classes,it is found that the joint production adopted in English writing teaching of senior high school has a positive effect in boosting the accuracy of students' writing.In addition,low-score group students in the experimental class have made better progress than those of high-score group.Therefore,the application of joint production to high school English writing teaching can not only improve the frequency of students' writing strategies,but also significantly facilitate students' writing accuracy.Such findings confirm the utility of joint production and provide important insights for English writing teaching.