Effects Of The Product Approach And The Process Approach On Senior High School Students' English Writing

English writing is a kind of output in English language learning and an important manifestation of students' command of English.In recent years,the overall English proficiency of Chinese students has improved significantly.However,their writing ability has not been greatly enhanced.English writing teaching is still a bottleneck link of ELT in China.Many scholars and English teachers have come to realize that teachers' approaches may play an important role in the improvement of students' writing ability.At present,the product approach and the process approach are two commonly used writing teaching approaches in English classroom,and extensive researches have been conducted separately on the product approach and the process approach,while there are few empirical comparative studies on the two teaching approaches in senior high school.In light of theories of Behaviorism,Communication Theory and Constructivism,and with reference to the preceding researches respectively on the product approach and the process approach,this study adopts empirical approach and attempts to answer the following three research questions:(1)What is the impact of the product approach and the process approach on senior high school students' English writing motivation?(2)How do the product approach and the process approach affect senior high school students' English writing strategies?(3)In what way do the product approach and the process approach influence senior high school students' English writing ability?The subjects of this study were 60 senior high school students from two intact classes of a high school in Loudi,Hunan.The product approach was used in the experimental class 1 while the process approach was conducted in the experimental class 2.The experiment lasted for 16 weeks.Writing tests,questionnaires and interviews were involved as the research instruments and all the data were analyzed by SPSS 23.0.The major findings of the study are as follows:(1)Both the product approach and the process approach can stimulate senior high school students' writing motivation,but the process approach can promote better.(2)Both the product approach and the process approach have a positive impact on the writing strategies used by students,but the process approach can improve more.(3)Both the product approach and the process approach have exerted a positive impact onstudents' writing ability.In comparison,the process approach has a greater impact.The product approach can improve students' writing ability,most significantly in language and structure,but less significantly in content and expression of thoughts,while the process approach most significantly in content,structure,and expression of thoughts,but less significantly in language.In a word,this study has demonstrated that in the senior high school English writing class,the process approach is more effective than the product approach,but both should complement each other.This finding can provide a useful reference for English writing teaching in senior high school to a certain extent.