Action Research Approach Towards ESA Teaching Model Improving Senior High School Students’ English Practical Writing Ability

The General High School English Curriculum Standard(2017 Version Revised in2020)emphasizes the development of students’ comprehensive application ability,and cultivate four basic skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing.As a comprehensive expression,writing requires more for students,is more challenging for them to finish the tasks,and needs students to pay more attention and energy to learning.Under the new background of collage entrance examination,English tests investigate more on students’ overall understanding and using and focus on their all-round ability,in the aspect of writing,which requires the school to arrange lessons systematically and exhaustively.However,nowadays senior high school English classes pay more attention to the reading and vocabularies while pay less attention to the writing.Meanwhile,since 2020,English college entrance examination in Shandong province increase one part of the Continuation writing,and the teachers set more energy on this part.Therefore,the systematic teaching in overall practical writing has decreased,which leads to many problems such as the lack of confidence in practical writing,the insufficient investment in writing,low improvement in their writing performance and so on.Accordingly,changing the recent teaching thoughts in Practical writing teaching and improving students’ writing interest and confidence become one of the most important researching contents.ESA teaching model proposed by Harmer aims to overcome students’ learning burnout,improve the learning investment,as well as complete the construction and application of writing information.This research applies ESA teaching model to senior high school English teaching of practical writing and uses 39 students at Dezhou senior high school in Shandong province as the research objects.During the researching process,the use of questionnaires,interviews,peer criticism,teachers’ teaching log and writing test are involved in the researching tools.What’s more,this study uses Boomerang sequence(engage-activate-study-activate)to the English writing teaching process for three rounds of action research,aiming to solve the following two problems:(1)What will be ESA teaching model’s influence on the interest of senior high school students?(2)What will be ESA teaching model’s effect on the writing ability of senior high school students?After using ESA teaching model to teach English practical writing for senior high students,the research results are as follows:(1)The combination of ESA teaching model and the practical writing teaching is viable,and ESA teaching model is good for enhancing writing confidence and improving learning interest.(2)ESA teaching model can promote students’ practical writing grades,and compared with students who are good at English writing,those who are not poor at English writing or not have excellent grades make their progress more obvious.What’s more,the micro and macro organizational structure of students’ writing has improved in different degrees,and in the aspect of macro organizational structure,it is more significant;This study combines ESA teaching model with the practical writing teaching in senior high school,aiming to solve students’ problems of the lack of confidence and improve their insufficient writing ability.It tries to promote the usage of Boomerang sequence teaching in English practical writing classes,expecting to inspire the following research in teaching English practical writing.