An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Production-oriented Approach On College Students’ English Writing

As a productive activity in English learning process,writing is generally regarded as the reflection of English learners’ comprehensive ability.In a retrospective of English writing teaching as well as the current English writing instruction in China,the present study is intended to investigate the effects of Production-oriented Approach on college students’ English writing through a one-semester empirical study.Two research questions concerning the overall effect of POA as well as the specific effects of POA on college students’ English writing were addressed.Sixty-five non-English major freshmen in two classes with comparable levels of English proficiency and English writing proficiency were selected as the subjects from Xi’an Aeronautical University and were randomly assigned as experimental group(EG)and control group(CG).Students in both groups accomplished 7 writing tasks during the 14-week treatment.Subjects’ compositions in pretest and posttest were all collected and evaluated by two college English teachers collaboratively.Based on the data obtained from independent samples t-tests and paired-samples t-tests.,major findings are subsequently revealed:(1)Generally,the POA has a positive and significant effect on college students’ English writing,with the writing EG being improved to a higher degree significantly compared with the students in CG after the one-semester treatment.(2)Specifically,the POA has significant effects on the organization,content as well as the style and quality of expression of students’ writing but doesn’t play an effective role in improving students’ grammar,punctuation,spelling and mechanics in writing.The findings of the study suggest that college English teachers could take advantage of the POA in writing instruction so that students’ English writing proficiency might be improved to a larger extent in aspects of organization,content as well as the style and quality of expression.Furthermore,more guidance could be provided concerning the grammar as well as the punctuation,spelling and mechanics in students’ writing.