A Survey On English Writing Teaching In Senior High School From The Perspective Of Activity-based Learning Approach

Writing is one of the five skills of listening,speaking,reading,viewing,and writing can demonstrate students’ comprehensive language ability.Learning how to write well can improve students’ ability to organize language and develop their thinking ability and learning ability.The English Curriculum Standard for General Senior High School(2017 edition,revised in 2020)proposed the activity-based learning approach,which aims to hone students’ language ability,develop their cultural awareness,cultivate their innovative thinking,and enhance their learning ability through three levels of activities: learning and understanding,applying and practicing,transferring and creating.Writing teaching is an essential part of English teaching in high school and is also vital for practicing the activity-based learning approach in the classrooms.This study primarily focuses on English writing teaching in senior high school and tends to explore the features of learning activities in writing lessons from the perspective of the approach,as well as the reasons behind such features.Under the guidance of output hypothesis,taxonomy of educational objectives,and constructivism,the study conducted classroom observations and interviews with seven English teachers in Grade one and a questionnaire survey with five classes of students in Grade one in Nanning ASEAN High School.This study mainly focuses on two research questions:(1)From the perspective of the activity-based learning approach,what learning activities do high school English teachers tend to design in writing classes?(2)What factors contribute to the teacher’ s design of activity-based learning activities in senior high school English writing classes?The findings show that:(1)in writing classes,English teachers in senior high school tend to design text-based learning and understanding activities,and the language input before writing is plenty.However,the results show that the in-depth text,applying and practicing activities and beyond-text,transferring and creating activities only take up a small part,and some lessons do not have the above two activities;(2)The factors cause such tendency include: teachers’ insufficient understanding of the concept,the difference of students’ English level,the limited class time,and the genre of the text.Based on the results of the study,some suggestions are provided as follows:(1)teachers should add more applying and practicing activities,and transferring and creating activities in writing lessons to provide students more opportunities to use language(2)teachers should tailor different levels of learning activities in writing lessons according to students’ English level;(3)teachers study the activity-based learning approach deeply and improve the corresponding practical ability;(4)teachers should change their teaching ideas,and design writing instructional activities according to the English key competences.At last,the study points out the shortcomings of the study and proposes some suggestions for future research.