A Study On The Application Of Experiential Teaching To English Writing In Junior High Schools

Among the four skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing in English learning,writing can best reflect students' comprehensive English quality.For junior high school students,it is necessary to grasp good English writing ability.These are the requirements of both the New English Curriculum Standards and the senior high school entrance examination,as well as the requirements of society.However,the current situation of English writing teaching in junior high school is not very satisfactory.In traditional English writing classes,most teachers pay more attention to the correctness of vocabulary and grammar,but ignor students' interest in writing and thinking.As a result,writing lessons are relatively inefficient.In this way,students are just like controlled machines,and their purposes are to get high marks on exams.Therefore,it is necessary for teachers to change the traditional teaching approach and pay more attention to students' experience and participation in the learning process.In 1984,David Kolb proposed the theory of experiential learning in his book Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development.This theory systematically combed the experience learning models of John Dewey,Kurt Lewin and Piaget to construct a unique theory of experiential learning circle.Based on the theory of experiential learning,this article conducts an experimental study of English writing teaching in a junior middle school,aiming to study the following research questions:(1)Can experiential teaching approach improve student's English writing interest,confidence and ability?(2)Which factor of students' English writing ability will get improved more significantly?(3)What is the students' attitude and feedback on the application of experiential teaching approach in English writing teaching?Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze the data collected in the experiment.Students from two parallel classes of Grade Two in Cai He middle school participated in the experiment,which lasted for four months.During the experiment,the author adopted the experiential teaching approach in the experimental class and the traditional writing teaching method in the control class.Before the experiment,all the students took part in the pre-questionnaire and the pre-test of English writing ability.Nine students of different levels in the experimental class received the pre-interview.The results show that there is no significant difference between the two classes in interest,confidence and level of English writing.After the experiment,the author conducted the post-test for the two classes through questionnaire and writing test respectively.At the same time,the same nine students were interviewed in the experimental class,so as to further understand the students' feedback on the new approach of experiential teaching.After the experiment,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)Experiential teaching approach can effectively improve students' interest and confidence in English writing;(2)Experiential teaching approach can improve students' English writing ability to a great extent,especially in the content of English writing;(3)Experiential teaching has received positive feedback from students in the experimental class,and students like and hope that teachers can continue to use this kind of teaching approach in English writing classes in the future.Based on the above conclusions,some pedagogical implications were proposed by the author,hoping to provide some suggestions to the English teachers.In the end of the article,the author summarized some limitations of this study and put forward some suggestions,laying a foundation for future related study.