On The Effects Of POA-based Instruction On The Development Of English Argumentative Writing Competence:A Case Study Of Chinese Junior High EFL Learners

To address the serious disjunction of inputting and outputting(DIO)of English in Chinese English education.Professor Wen Qiufang initiated the Production-Oriented Approach(POA),a homegrown teaching theory.The primary purpose of the research is to investigate whether POA-based instruction can develop argumentative writing competence for junior high EFL learners and in an attempt to understand some possible factors facilitating or impeding the development.The study was based on an intensive online English argumentative writing course,carried out within twelve weeks.The three participants are carefully chosen from the potential applicants,two seven graders and one eight grader.All of them were with about the same entry writing scores of CEFR level B1.A triangulated approach was adopted in order to collect data by means of a questionnaire,written products,semi-structured interviews,online course recording and reflective journals.All data were collected and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.The weekly written products were evaluated by two human markers and one e-rater.The author transcribed and coded background information from the questionnaire as well as all the interview transcripts and weekly reflective journals.The narrowed-down coding themes are parents'English proficiency,learning style,learning strategies,Chinese proficiency,general knowledge,independence/creativity and perseverance.The main findings are,under certain conditions,the POA can effectively address the issue of disjunction of inputting and outputting,i.e.the POA-based instruction can develop the English argumentative writing competence of the junior high EFL learners,especially in ideational competence and discourse competence.The second findings are the seven main factors which can facilitate or impede argumentative writing competence.They are derived from the seven coding themes,among which parents' English proficiency works as an important factor and it can also affect their children's learning style,learning strategies,Chinese proficiency,general knowledge indirectly.Children's independence/creativity and perseverance are the factors from their personal traits.Main pedagogical significance of this study are:1)the author calls for EFL writing teachers to take advantage of their teaching process to instill,instruct and inspire students' metacognitive strategies;2)topical knowledge makes a unique contribution to the prediction of genre-specific writing quality;3)these findings offer support for the connection between knowledge of persuasive discourse and students" persuasive writing so that learners may need some learner training to make the most of their learning opportunities;4)while POA based instruction has becoming mature and applicable,the POA should be and could be applied to different language teaching classrooms.Longitudinal studies,which employ think-aloud protocols as a data collection method,were recommended in order to document,more systematically,changes in English argumentative writing competence over a longer time.