A Research On The Application Of The Anchored Instruction In Senior High School English Writing

The New English Curriculum Standard (2005) points out: the goal of the fundamental educational phase is to develop the students'comprehensive competence. And writing as a productive skill is a mirror of the comprehensive competence. Therefore, English writing get attention from many educators and researchers, and they carried out many researches on it. However, in traditional teaching, the class is still teacher-centered, the students have little chance for expressing ideas and lack of interest in writing and they do not know how to write. It leads to the students'writing competence is poor, and they can not do effective written communication.In order to change this present situation, motivate students'learning interest and improve the writing ability, anchored instruction is introduced into English writing class by the author. The anchored instruction model is based on the theory of constructivism. It emphasizes on situating the learning in realistic problems, to make students have learning needs. Then they learn autonomously and collaborate with group members to solve the problem. It can innovate on the traditional teacher-centered teaching model and it can help to set up the student-centered teaching model which lays stress on acquiring the direct experience, on solving the problems, on developing students'initiatives and the practical ability. The anchored instruction is consistent with the New English Curriculum Standard (2005).Anchored instruction is developed by the Cognition & Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV) under the leadership of John Bransford. The application of anchored instruction has been to elementary language arts and mathematics skills. But the research on the application of anchored instruction hasn't been widely carried out, especially in English writing in senior high school. The present paper is intended to show that the application of anchored instruction has a positive effect on English writing. The author intends to testify the following hypothesis: Is the model of anchored instruction superior to the traditional model in students'writing performance?Is the model of anchored instruction helpful to motivate students'interest of problem solving in English writing?Can the model of anchored instruction cultivate students'consciousness of autonomous learning?Can this model help students'to promote cooperative learning? The period of the study lasts one semester: from September, 2010 to January, 2011. The experiment was carried out in class 65 (experimental class) and class 66(control class) of Yongnian Senior High School---a rural school. The anchored instruction was implemented in experimental class, which the traditional model was implemented in control class. First, the researcher conducted a pre-test to show the students'writing ability in two classes is parallel, then collected the information of the students'English writing situation by carrying out pre-questionnaire. Second, the researcher implemented the anchored instruction in the experimental class. Third, the researcher testified the effect of the anchored instruction by analyzing the post test scores, and the results show that the anchored instruction is superior to the traditional model, it can create a relaxed and interactive learning atmosphere, arouse the writing interest, form the positive attitude to English writing, help students learn autonomously, enhance the confidence in writing, promote their collaborative abilities and improve their writing abilities.However, to make full use of the potential of the anchored instruction model, the English writing teacher should update their teaching ideology and change the way of teaching; Students should become independent ones of English writing and be capable of autonomous learner.