An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Problem-based Learning On Senior High School Students’ English Writing

The English Curriculum Standards for General Senior High School(2017 Edition,2020 Revised version)emphasizes that teachers should create thematic situations around the discourse,integrate the learning and development of language skills,and improve students’ ability to analyze and solve problems.Writing teaching is one of the most fundamental and crucial aspects in senior high school English teaching.Writing,as a highly integrated teaching content,has a strong relationship with vocabulary,grammar,and reading instruction.In practical teaching,more and more high school teachers realize that there are problems in writing teaching,which they do not play a good role in assisting and guiding.At the same time,writing is still a weak link for the vast majority of students.Students’ writing proficiency is generally very low,and some students are even in a state of coping when writing.Problem-based Learning is to put students in a meaningful problem situation and stimulate their thinking through problems,so that students can make progress in the whole learning process.This study is mainly to combine Problem-based Learning with high school English writing teaching and explore whether this teaching method is effective for students’ English writing.This thesis mainly focuses on the following three questions:1.What is the effect of Problem-based Learning on organization in English writing of senior high school students?2.What is the effect of Problem-based Learning on lexis in English writing of senior high school students?3.What is the effect of Problem-based Learning on grammar in English writing of senior high school students?The experiment adopts quantitative and qualitative research methods.The author conducts a three-month experiment in a high school in Shijiazhuang.Experimental subjects are 104 students in two parallel classes in Grade 11,52 in experimental class and 52 in control class.The instruments include a pre-test,a post-test and an interview.In the experiment,the Problem-based Learning is adopted in experimental class and process writing method is used in control class.2020 National Volume II of English test paper of NCEE is employed for the pre-test,and 2020 National Volume I of English test paper of NCEE is used for the post-test.SPSS 24.0 is adopted for independent sample T test for all data.At the end of the experiment,six students are randomly selected from the low,middle and high groups of the experimental class for interview.The experiment proves that Problem-based Learning plays a positive role in students’ writing.1)Under the guidance of the Problem-based Learning,students are able to clearly understand the structure of the composition,with each sentence having obvious relevance and a clear overall structure.2)By utilizing Problem-based Learning,students can also use some complex vocabulary flexibly to enhance their vocabulary and composition content.3)Students’ grammar ability has also been improved to varying degrees,but compared with the other two items,the improvement of grammar in writing is less noticeable.As a result of the composition,students are also trying to enrich their own compositions and improve their grammar ability.In conclusion,the application of problem-based learning can effectively improve students’ writing.Based on the research results,some pedagogical implications are presented.1)In the teaching of writing,teachers should be skilled at developing various situations that reflect the students’ real-life experiences so that students have writing prompts.2)In order to better exercise students’ thinking skills,teachers should use problems to stimulate students’ thinking and encourage them to share the results of their ideas.3)Teachers should promote collaboration among students,enhance peer communication,and encourage better brainstorming.4)Teachers should give feedback to students,actively interact with students,and be the guide and corrector in class.