An Action Research On The Application Of Project-Based Learning Model Based On Thematic Meaning In Junior High School English Writing Teaching

English writing serves as a comprehensive reflection of students’ language ability and plays a significant role in English teaching.Junior high school students have been struggling with inappropriate language expressions,insufficient content,and a lack of logic in their writing.Project-based learning based on the thematic meaning(TM-PBL)allows students to learn around a theme-based project in the process of initiating,exploring,carrying out and evaluating projects.Based on the constructivism learning theory,pragmatic theory,Bruner’s theory of discovery learning and Krashen’s input hypothesis,this action research was conducted to find out the answers to the following questions:(1)How does the TM-PBL model promote the junior high school students’English writing in terms of language?(2)How does the TM-PBL model promote the junior high school students’English writing in terms of content?(3)How does the TM-PBL model promote the junior high school students’English writing in terms of structure?The participants were 48 students in grade 8 at Bowen junior high school in Shandong Province.Two rounds of action research,lasting for 11 weeks,were implemented.The first round contained problem identification,plan making,plan implementation,assessments and reflections;the second round consisted of problem re-identification,plan re-making,plan re-implementation,re-assessments and rereflections.The instruments included classroom observation,writing test,interview and questionnaire.After two rounds of action research,three major findings can be revealed as follows.(1)In terms of language,the post-test scores were significantly higher than the pre-test because students’ writing contained more accurate grammatical structures and almost no errors in spelling or punctuation were found.Classroom observations revealed that after self-checking and group inter-assessment,students made fewer mistakes in spelling words,collocation of words,usage of coronals,and singular and plural nouns.For the final output of high-quality project products,students took the initiative to learn and accumulate many vocabularies and structures,and they creatively used them in their writings,which helped them accumulate many linguistic expressions to some extent.(2)In terms of content,the majority of students were able to write a composition with all of the main points without redundancy,and their post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores.In the TM-PBL model,students were trained to understand the main concept and express their ideas clearly and logically through discussion and understanding of the materials they gathered.Students were encouraged to express their opinions freely and share ideas about a writing theme in an interactive and relaxing environment.This not only stimulated their thought processes but also increased their knowledge,which in turn enriched the diversity of their writing content to some extent.(3)In terms of structure,it was obtained that the students paid more attention to the coherence of their writing and the writings’ structure became more standardized,and they performed much better on the post-test than on the pre-test.During the teaching process,students discussed the outline of their writing based on the collected information in a group discussion session and used mind maps to express their ideas.Through the discussion,they consciously reduced the logical confusion of their writing and thus the essay was more holistic and logical.This experimental instructional approach,combining PBL and thematic meaning,with relatively high operability and practicability,has a certain enlightening effect on the reform of middle school English writing teaching.The research indicates that TMPBL is an effective approach for the teacher to teach writing.There are three pedagogical implications:To ensure the efficient implementation of the main project,teachers can divide it into sub-projects in practical teaching.And the emphasis should be given to effective time management and student self-management.What’s more,the groups with weaker skills and slower progress in the project need more guidance from the teacher.It is recommended that further research to duplicate this study with a longer time and bigger size of subjects so that the result could be generalized.