| The teaching of English writing in high school exerts a significant impact on the students' future learning and professional development.Unfortunately,many teachers consider the cultivation of writing ability as the teaching of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge,as well as the introduction of writing templates.As a result,when students respond to writing tasks,their choice of words breaks away from the context and their use of grammatical structures is rigid.Also,their discourse lacks coherence and cohesion.In order to tackle the problems mentioned above and enhance students' writing ability from the perspectives of lexical resource,grammatical range and accuracy,coherence and cohesion,Professor Wen Qiufang(2015)proposes Product-oriented Approach(POA).The studies on the application of POA in English teaching are mainly situated in colleges rather than high schools,and there are few studies assessing the changes in writing ability from the perspectives of writing ability components.More importantly,despite the studies on the overall impact of POA on students' English writing ability,few studies have focused on the impact on students at different proficiency levels.Based on the theoretical and empirical studies on POA,this study focuses on the following research questions:(1)How does POA affect the English writing ability of high English proficiency level students in high school?(2)How does POA affect the English writing ability of medium English proficiency level students in high school?(3)How does POA affect the English writing ability of low English proficiency level students in high school?The research subjects were students from a four-star senior high school in Jiangsu,with 52 students in the experimental group and 52 students in the control group,of which 27% belonged to high and low level groups respectively according to the psychometrics(27% is a division value under the condition of normal distribution and is an empirical value).The teaching experiment lasted for ten weeks.The study used SPSS 21.0 data processing software to collect and process the pre-and post-experiment questionnaire data and test data from the aspects of writing abilitycomponents(lexical resource,grammatical range and accuracy,coherence and cohesion).In the meantime,one student was selected from each proficiency level in the experimental group for a structured interview.This study analyzed the questionnaire and test data before and after the experiment as well as the results of interviews to understand the changes in students' cognition of writing ability,the changes in students' actual writing ability and the changes in students' views on writing ability training.The conclusions and inspirations are proposed as follows:Firstly,high-level students' cognition of writing ability as well as their actual writing ability are significantly improved after POA teaching.For high level students receiving the traditional Product Approach teaching,their changes in both the cognition of writing ability and the actual writing ability are not obvious;for high level students taught by POA,their cognition of writing ability as well as their actual writing ability are improved,which are also much more significant than those in medium and low groups.Such findings mean that POA is more effective for the high level students' writing teaching.It is conducive to the collection of teaching resources for better talent training,and caters to the demand for high-end talents in foreign languages and other fields.Secondly,POA has deepened medium level students' cognition of writing ability,but the improvement of medium level students' actual writing ability is not significant.The questionnaire data analysis tells the fact that medium level students receiving POA writing teaching have formed a deeper understanding of writing ability.From the test results,it is known that although medium level students in the experiment group can apply the target language items to the writing and reduce grammatical errors,their writings still lack cohesion and coherence.That is to say,the influence exerted by POA teaching on students' writing ability appears to be consistent yet slow.Due to the significant differentiation of students' writing ability,POA writing teaching needs to emphasize more on the “motivating” stage,creating a “learning hunger” and stimulating students' learning enthusiasm.Thirdly,POA does not improve the writing ability cognition and the actual writing ability of low level students.The reasons for the poor effects of POA on lowlevel students are explained as follows: First,students in the real learning context can only complete the writing tasks with the help of teacher's “scaffolding”;second,in a typical POA teaching circle,the experiment group should go through the final“assessing” step,but in this study,the backwash effects of “assessing” may not be reflected;third,for low level students,the target language points in the textbook are not easy,so it is difficult for them to apply what they have learned to the actual writing.If they cannot fully obtain the basic language knowledge,it is difficult for them to improve their writing ability.This study has the following three implications: First,the teaching practice of POA should be adjusted in a timely manner according to the students' learning conditions.Faced with students at different language proficiency levels in high school,teachers should adjust the difficulty level of tasks,the “motivating” means and the“enabling” support,in order to achieve the desired teaching effects.Second,POA has deepened students' understanding of English writing ability training.Thus students can tackle the “learning-using separation”,accept the “learning(process)-centered”theory,attach great importance to cultural connotation,and focus on improving the cohesion and coherence of their writing.Third,POA writing teaching can achieve higher teaching efficiency,better teaching results,and healthier development of teacher-student relationship under the guidance of “teacher-led,teacher-student co-construction” principle. |
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