Secondary English Writing Teaching Strategies

Effective English writing has long remained a challenge in ELT writing class, and traditional product approach, which focuses on the final product of writing, remains dominant in writing teaching, especially in elementary classroom. Besides, the old syllabus and textbooks of elementary school attached less importance to the exploration of new approach in writing teaching and learning. Writing teachers are confined to the traditional teaching methodology and tend to adopt the product approach. As a result, they emphasize the grammatical correctness and language usage with a somewhat disregard of students' initiative, interests and passion in writing course. Therefore, a shift from the traditional product approach to the process approach is definitely necessary for the present writing teaching. A new try of adopting process approach in elementary classroom is particularly urgent for the course reform and the development of new course materials.The paper aims at exploring an effective writing strategy for elementary English class. The research employs second language acquisition theory, constructionist theory, communicative theory, and process-focused-approach as its theoretical foundation. The whole study is based on the library research, investigation and experiment. 95 students from the same grade were divided into two classes, experimental class, in which process approach is adopted with emphasis on developing students' interests and initiative in writing, and common class, in which the traditional product approach is used without any changes. Two-year experiment reveals that, firstly, process approach in elementary English class is helpful in developing and arousing students' interests in writing and reducing their anxiety; secondly, process approach can help students form a correct perspective of writing, clarifying their writing purposes and develop an appropriate writing attitude; thirdly, process approach enables students to explore the content and discover ideas when writing; last but not the least, process approach is helpful in improving students' overall language skills.Evidences show that process approach should have its place in elementary English teaching class.