Research On The Application Of Problem-based Learning To The Argumentative English Writing In Senior High School

Argumentative writing,as a course which is headache in any schools the world over,is a long-neglected discourse in some area to some extent because of the low mark in the entrance examination.In high school in our country,a given high demand for students’logic skills are being in execution.This improves their language performance,yet,students’short-coming still exist.For example,their compositions partially,are low in enthusiasm,empty in content or low critical thinking（CT）in performance.In order to solve such problems currently teachers of English,along with educators,are eager to reform.This way,if possible,approximately can adapt to the new requirements of the Senior High School English Curriculum Standard（2017）.Problem-based Learning（PBL）is an inquiry and cooperative teaching method based on the real problem situation under teachers’guidance.Related research shows that there is a very good performance in promoting students’overall development.As for this,the thesis puts forward the application of PBL to English language teaching（ELT）in argumentative writing.This study mainly discusses three questions:（1）To what extent can PBL improve students’CT disposition?（2）To what extent can PBL improve students’writing score?（3）To what extent does writing score and CT disposition correlate in PBL?The experiment was conducted from September 9,2019 to December 30,2019,for sixteen weeks.Students from two parallel classes in Grade 1 of XX Senior High School in Jinzhou City,Liaoning Province were regarded as the experiment subjects.The EC was Class 13（49 students）,adopting the PBL teaching method,while the CC Class 8（49students）,was carrying on the traditional method.The experiment adopted the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis by using questionnaires,tests,and interviews to collect data.Ninety-eight questionnaire samples,ninety-eight writing test samples and nine interview samples were collected respectively.By analyzing data collected in the pre-test and post-test,the following conclusions are drawn:The experimental results illustrates that the PBL had a positive impact on students’CT disposition,especially in the sub-dimensions of inquisitiveness（t（96）=5.452,p<0.05）,open-mindedness（t（96）=6.365,p<0.05）,and analyticity（t（96）=6.896,p<0.05）.Besides,the argumentative writing score（t（96）=3.969,p<0.05）of EC have improved significantly.There is a positive correlation between students’CT disposition and their writing scores(r_{writing-crtical thinking}=0.788,p<0.05)when language proficiency is stable.The improvement of CT disposition will affect on writing scores to some extent.Therefore,it is feasible and effective for the teacher of English to use the PBL method to teach argumentative writing in high school.