An Empirical Study On The Application Of The Process Approach To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

English writing is an indispensable part of the four basic skills(listening, speaking,reading and writing), and it can reflect the mastery of language skills and integrating abilities of the learners. However, the teaching of English writing has been the weakest part in junior high school English teaching. Most students dislike writing and some are even scared of writing. Therefore, new teaching modes as well as teaching methods are in need to improve the teaching of writing and the students’ writing skills.Based on the theories of cognitive process, constructivism and cooperative learning,the study applied a process-oriented approach to writing teaching in Ningbo Experimental School, with the purpose to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of this approach.Specifically, there are three questions to experiment with:1. Can the process approach cultivate students’ positive writing attitude?2. Can the process approach improve students’ writing scores?3. What effects does the process approach have on high-score group and low-score group respectively?This study is an empirical research using both quantitative and qualitative analysis.The 66 participants were from two parallel classes both in Grade Three. Class One(33students) was selected as the control class while Class Two(33 students) as the experimental class. The experiment was designed to last for four months, which includes three stages. In the first stage, the pre-questionnaire and the pre-test were carried out on both the control class and the experimental class. During the second stage, the control class was taught with the traditional approach(the product approach) while the experimental class was taught with the process approach. In the last stage, the post-questionnaire, the interview and the post-test were conducted.From the experiment, it can be concluded that the process approach can cultivate students’ positive writing attitude. And this approach can improve students’ writing scores to a great extent. Moreover, the process approach has positive effects on both high-score students and low-score students, and high-score students could benefit more from the process approach than low-score students.