An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Production-oriented Approach On Junior High School Students' English Writing Ability

In traditional writing teaching,it only focuses on the writing products.The teaching pattern is: the teacher provides a writing sample—the teacher explains the sample—students imitate the writing sample—the teacher assesses the composition.For such a writing teaching method,most students' writing ability is poor.In the academic test for the junior high school students in Guangdong province in 2018,the total score of the composition was 15 points while the mean score of the students in Qingyuan city was 3.81.So it can be seen that the teaching effect of writing is unsatisfactory.The reform of writing teaching is exceptionally urgent.To improve English writing teaching,the author tries to apply the production-oriented approach into class.In this experimental research,the author applies the production-oriented approach to English writing class in junior high school and investigates its effects on students' writing ability.There are two research questions in this study:(1)Can POA improve the English writing ability of junior high school students more effectively than the product approach?(2)Can POA improve students' writing interest more effectively? A cohort of 90 Grade Nine students in Chengdong Middle School participated in the study.They were randomly divided into two groups: an experimental group(N=45)and a control group(N=45).During twelve weeks' experiment,the experimental group receives the production-oriented approach while the control group receives the product approach in English writing teaching.The study is an empirical research which contains the pre-test,the post-test,questionnaires and the interview.Here is the research procedure:(1)Do a survey.Before the experiment,we conducted the pre-questionnaire in the experimental group and the control group.(2)Pre-test and post-test.Pretest and post-test are carried out in the experimental group and the control group.We took the final examination which was organized by Educational Bureau as the pre-test(the second semester of Grade Eight)and post-test(the first semester of Grade Nine).The pre-test is conducted to examine whether the participants' English proficiency and writing ability are at thesame level.After 12 weeks' experiment,post-test is conducted in the experimental group and the control group.Post-test aims to test whether POA can improve the junior students writing ability more effectively.(3)In order to testify whether POA can improve students' interest,a post-questionnaire is conducted after the experiment.(4)In order to make the quantitative data more reliable and valid,an interview is also done after the experiment.Six students from different levels have the interview.The author collected all the data and analyzed the data with statistical software SPSS 18.0 after the experiment.After analyzing the data,we found that:(1)POA can improve Junior High School students' writing competence more effectively,especially in writing content,writing language and writing coherence.(2)Compared with the product approach,POA can improve students' writing interest more effectively.Besides,there are three implications:(1)Production-oriented Approach is more effective for high-level students.(2)The implementation of the production-oriented approach requires a lot of time to do preparation,so the burden on teachers is quite heavy.(3)The application of the production-oriented approach requires persistence to reflect the learning effect.