A Study Of Process Approach In English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

Two approaches have been widely used in English writing teaching: Process Approach and Product Approach.Process Approach pays attention to the whole process of writing.This approach regards writing as cycled psychological cognitive process,social communication process and the process of creation(Deng Liming,2003).Process Approach emphasizes students' creativity and communication in writing.It is suggested that teacher should provide continuous intervention in the whole process of writing and help students construct and express their ideas progressively.The Process Approach aims at teaching students how to finish English writing effectively and independently,and finally improving their writing ability.The researchers and educators have been working for decades to find out more effective approaches to improve students' writing ability.Some researchers believe that the Process Approach can improve students' writing levels and develop their awareness of writing process and cooperation.But other researchers doubt the practical effects and the popularity of the Process Approach.Besides,the Process Approach is demanding in classroom teaching for it needs more time and efforts.The studies of Process Approach in China are rather fewer,especially in junior high school.An comparative teaching experiment is designed in this study to test the effects of Process Approach on students in junior high school.There are three research questions in this study:1.Is the Process Approach more effective than Product Approach in improving students' English writing achievements?2.What are the effects of Process Approach on the English writings' accuracy,fluency and complexity in junior high school?3.What are the students' attitudes towards Process Approach in English writing?The writing tests,questionnaire,interview and Wolfe-Quintero's T-Unit assessment are used to collect and analyze the data in this experiment.The subjects are 90 students in two classes of Grade 9 in Min Shan school in Ding Xi.Firstly,there was a pretest for the two classes.The results show that there is no significant difference between the two classes in their writing levels.The analysis of accuracy,fluency and complexity by T-Unit also shows the two classes have the same level.So the two classes have been chosen as the EG and CG randomly.Next,there are three writing assignments for EG and CG.The EG was taught by Process Approach while the CG was taught by Product Approach.Students of EG finished each writing in 8 steps that designed to help them form the process awareness of English writing.After the three writingtasks,the EG and CG finished the posttest at the same time.EG also finished the questionnaire and several students acted as volunteers for the interview.And all the related data were collected and analyzed by SPSS17.0.Conclusions of the research are as follows:(1)Compared with Product Approach,the Process Approach is more effective to improve learners' English writing ability.(2)The results of data analysis based on T-Units assessments show that the writings' accuracy and fluency of learners in EG have been improved,but no significant effect for complexity is observed;these three aspects of learners in CG have no significant change.(3)The results of questionnaire and interview indicate that the majority of the subjects prefer the Process Approach as it can make them more interested and confident in English writing.The study also provides some implications for the current writing teaching:(1)The Process Approach should be applied to writing teaching and its teaching procedures should be connected with the teaching environment and students' writing level.(2)There should be continuous guidance and intervention from the teacher in English writing to help learners output effectively.(3)Teacher' s assessment for writing should be encouraging and practical to help students rectify their writings and be more confident.(4)The activities for English learning should involve more communication and cooperation to make students internalize knowledge better.