A Study On The Application Of Production-oriented Approach To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

Writing is an imperative indicator to measure students’ comprehensive capability to use a language,and the new curriculum standards for compulsory education also set higher requirements for students’ writing ability.Therefore,developing students’ writing performance should be one of the primary tasks of junior high school English teaching.However,some challenging problems in current junior high school English writing teaching need urgently to be addressed,such as rigid and monotonous teaching approaches,the status of attaching more importance to input than output,and shortages of students’ interest and motivation for English writing,etc.Meanwhile,Wen Qiufang proposed the production-oriented approach(POA),aiming to overcome the problems of separating learning from application in English language education in China,and it has achieved gratifying results for English teaching in college.For these reasons,the author attempted to apply POA to English writing instruction in junior high school in order to improve students’ writing performance and writing motivation.This study centered on two questions: 1.What are the effects of POA on junior high school students’ writing performance? 2.What are the effects of POA on junior high school students’ writing motivation?The author conducted a 14-week teaching experiment with 98 students from two classes of Grade 8 in a rural junior high school in Hengyang based on the above research questions.48 students from the experimental class(EC)accepted the writing teaching model based on POA,while the traditional teaching method was used for 50 students in the control class(CC).The writing test and questionnaire were organized before and after the teaching experiment to test the changes in students’ writing performance and writing motivation.The author collected and organized all the data and analyzed them using SPSS 24.0.In addition,a semi-structured interview was conducted in EC following the experiment,and the results were used as a supplement.Here are the findings: First,the application of POA had a positive effect on students’ writing performance.Students’ writing scores for content integrity and language accuracy were significantly enhanced in EC after the experiment.Second,the writing teaching model based on POA provided students with a positive emotional experience in writing,which stimulated their writing motivation,particularly in terms of self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation.This study has some limitations due to insufficient experiment time and a small sample size,but the findings have confirmed that POA has positive effects on English writing instruction in junior high school.At the end of this paper,some practical pedagogical implications and suggestions are proposed to provide a reference for related research in the future.