An Empirical Study On The Application Of Production-oriented Approach To English Writing Teaching In Secondary Vocational School

In The Syllabus for Secondary Vocational English Course,the proposed goal of secondary vocational English teaching is to cultivate students’ English competence of comprehensive application while strengthening the basic language knowledge,especially the ability to deal with business in daily life and workplace.English writing,as one of the five basic language skills in English learning,effectively reflects students’ English competence of comprehensive language application as required in the syllabus.However,under the traditional English teaching methods,secondary vocational students neither have adequate English writing proficiency,nor keen interest in learning English writing.So it is urgent to find out an approach which can improve the current situation,and enhance the teaching effects.The POA,a novel teaching theory with Chinese characteristics proposed by Prof.Wen Qiufang,aims at resisting and even reversing the worrying tendency towards the separation between learning and using which has been existing in current tertiary English teaching in Chinese mainland.In recent years,some domestic studies have proved the effectiveness of the POA on English writing teaching in colleges,senior high and junior high schools.As a result,this thesis attempts to combine the POA with English writing teaching in secondary vocational school to explore what effects the application of the POA to secondary vocational English writing has on students’ English writing proficiency and students’ perceptions of English writing.This 14-week empirical research was conducted in two parallel classes of Grade Two in Yuncheng School of Finance and Economics with respectively 42 students and 43 students in EC and CC.During the experiment,the POA was used in EC and the process approach in CC.The research instruments included tests,questionnaires and an interview,and the quantitative data were analyzed by statistical software SPSS 21.0.By analyzing the data,it can be concluded that the POA is effective in promoting students’ English writing proficiency,especially in the aspects of ideas and language.And it can transform the students’ perceptions of English writing into a more positive version in the three dimensions,namely the perceptions of English writing,language and discourse structure.This research has verified the effectiveness of the POA in secondary English writing teaching.In addition,teachers are suggested to make full preparations and have a clear understanding of students’ writing proficiency before writing teaching in order to design proper writing tasks and select appropriate input materials for students so that students can make progress in writing under the guidance of the POA.And it is expected that this research can have certain referential value for secondary vocational English writing teaching and related studies.