A Study Of English Writing Pedagogy Based On Thematic Context And Problem-based Teaching In Middle School

In the English teaching in junior middle schools,improving students’ writing skills is important to develop students’ comprehensive language ability,which meets the requirements of English Curriculum Standards in the stage of compulsory education.However,nowadays some problems occur in the English writing courses,such as the lack of vocabulary,weakness in logic,inaccurate use of grammar and the lack of interest.These phenomenons are closely related to pedagogy.Some teachers still prefer to use the traditional teaching method,which is based on grammar and vocabulary teaching,so that students can’t practise their writing skills in the authentic language contexts.Therefore,in order to improve students’ writing ability,it is necessary to develop a more effective teaching method.Under the instruction of thematic context and mission situation from English Curriculum Standards,this thesis comes up with a teaching method called the problem-and-thematic-context based teaching method,according to the domestic and foreign research.This study attempts to explore whether such teaching method can have a positive influence on students’ English writing interests and motivation in junior high school,as well as enhancing students’ writing ability.The study aims to answer the following questions:(1)Can this teaching method improve the English writing interests and motivation of junior high school students effectively?(2)Can this teaching method promote the English writing of junior high school students positively?(3)How does this teaching method affect students’ writing from the perspectives of content,structure,grammar and communication?(4)Does this teaching method have different effects on students with different writing proficiency?And what’s the difference?In this study,37 students from a class of grade 9 in a foreign language school in Nanjing are selected as the participants.The teaching experiment is carried out by using the quantitative and qualitative research methods for three months.Research data are collected by one-to-one interviews,class observation and writing tests.The data analysis is conducted after the experiment,which aims to test the effectiveness of problem-and-thematic-context based teaching method.The research shows that,firstly,problem-and-thematic-context based teaching method can effectively enhance junior high school students’ English writing quality,which is embodied in the complete content and clear structure.Secondly,problemand-thematic-context based teaching method can improve students’ interests and motivation,which means more students would like to practise writing after the experiment.Thirdly,such teaching method has a distinctive effect on students with different writing levels.By analyzing the results of writing tests,it shows that this teaching method is more effective on students with middle and lower writing levels.As for the proficient students,it is less influential but still can promote the writing score.During the experiment,the author realizes that teachers should choose the topic that is related to students’ daily life,as well as set mission task directly linked to the writing task.What’s more,it is important for teachers to evaluate students’ writing production with the help of effective peer activities and develop a useful evaluation scale for English writing.