A Study Of The Application Of POA To The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior High School

The senior high school English course aims at helping students acquire knowledge and use language and cultivating their key competency of English subject.The new curriculum standard puts forward higher requirements for English teaching in senior high schools;however,the present English teaching generally has the problems of much input and little output and the separation of learning and using.Therefore,both English learning motivation and English scores of students are not high.To overcome the problem of “separation of learning and using”,Production-oriented Approach（POA）is developed.Because it advocates“integrated learning and using”,which is one of its teaching principles.At present,this teaching method has been deeply studied at college English but there is still a lot of research space in senior high school English teaching.So it is necessary to carry out the application research of this method in senior high school English teaching.The experiment was carried out in this study for half of a semester in a senior high school in Fuyang.89 students from two parallel classes of Grade Two were selected as experimental subjects.Class 6 was chosen as the experimental class and Production-oriented teaching method applied in this class.The author teaches the two classes.The writing materials and writing tasks are identical.However,in the experimental class,the author uses the English writing teaching mode guided by the POA theory,while in the control class,the author uses the standard writing teaching mode.This study attempts to answer three main questions:1.What effect does POA have on senior high school students’ motivation in English writing?2.What effect does POA have on senior high school students’ scores in English writing?3.What effect does POA have on senior high school students’ strategy in English writing?Before the experiment,students’ writing motivation,confidence and attitude in two classes are investigated through pre-questionnaires.The writing performance in first monthly examination is used as the pre-test to test whether there were significant differences in students’ writing level between the two classes.During the experiment,the author adopts the POA to teach English writing in the experimental class.After the experiment,the writing performance in mid-term examination is used as the post-test to verify the changes in the writing level of the two classes.Besides,a questionnaire survey and interview with the experimental class are conducted at the same time in order to know the effect of English writing teaching under the POA on students’ writing motivation,writing scores and writing strategies.Students’ writing motivation,writing scores,and writing tactics all increased dramatically in the experimental class after the POA theory was applied to English writing training in senior high school.The feasibility and usefulness of applying the POA theory to senior high school English writing teaching is shown in this experiment.It has some enlightening implications for senior high school English writing instruction.Meanwhile,this study also has its limitations,for example,research time is limited and the number of research samples is relatively small.Thus,the further exploration and experiment are required.