An Experimental Study Of Process Writing Approach To English Teaching In Junior High School

The purpose of English teaching in high school is to train students' basic skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing,and to cultivate students' preliminary ability of using English.Moreover,writing is considered to be the skill that can mostly reflect students' comprehensive capability of English.It is of great significance and should be given enough attention.Along with the advancement of educational reform,English teaching in junior high schools pays more and more attention to the effectiveness of writing teaching and the improvement of students' English writing ability.In practice,however,the effect of English writing teaching in junior high school is not satisfying.The vast majority of English teachers in high schools still adopt the traditional product writing approach.This approach ignores the factors such as skills,knowledge,emotion,writing strategies and cultural awareness.It emphasizes more on the accuracy of grammar and final products.As a result,many English learners lose the interests and confidence in writing gradually.In the past few decades,the process writing approach has been the mainstream of second language writing teaching in western countries.It pays more attention to students' collaboration during a series of writing procedures,for example peer-review.This approach is beneficial to students to write articles that are better in content and form.More importantly,it echoes modern scholars' advocation that writing process deserves more attention than writing results.The studies of process writing approach in China are mostly carried out in universities and senior high schools,while experimental studies carried out in junior high schools are relatively few.Given the actual writing situation of students in junior high school,the research aims to answer the following two questions:1.Is the process writing approach helpful in strengthening students' writing interests and motivation?2.Is the process writing approach effective in improving students' English writing ability?The author carried out the experiment in Xingtai No.19 Middle School.Four instruments were used,namely,questionnaire,pre-test and post-test,five composition tests and interview.Two parallel classes were chosen.One was experimental class with process writing approach,and the other one was control class adopting traditional product writing approach.The experiment was divided into three stages,lasting for a semester.Through the analysis of the data,the author found that the process writing approach could not only strengthen students' English writing interests and motivation,but also improve students' English writing ability.To some extent,it can be said that process writing approach is a good method to enhance junior high schools students' English writing ability.