A Research Design on Process—oriented Approach Applied in English Writing Courses for Non— English Majors in College.

Abstract： English writing teaching in college has been a weak part all the time and it is of great urgency to find an appropriated teaching method to reform it. Considering the present situation， the author makes a research design to test whether the process-oriented approach can be effective in improving college students writing ability.

Key words： process-oriented approach； writing teaching

Introduction

Writing is one of the important aspects of students pragmatic competence in foreign language and also one of the four basic skills （listening， speaking， reading and writing） in English learning， which can show students expression skill and integrated ability to use language. However， at present， writing class for non-English majors in college has the following problems： 1. limited time for teaching writing； 2. inadequate guidance on writing strategies； 3. poor vocabulary and grammar； 4. monotonic form of writing evaluation；5. low validity of feedback.

In view of the above problems， the author believes that it is of great necessity to change the way of writing teaching for non-English majors in our university. The present study investigates the writing ability of participants in two groups， one experimental group and one control group， which are respectively under the instruction of process-oriented approach and product-oriented approach for three months.

Research design

1.Research Questions：

1） What kind of teaching method can improve students writing ability？ Are the process-oriented approach more effective than the product-oriented approach in improving the participants writing ability？

2） What the students attitudes towards English writing and writing method？ Can the process-oriented approach be effective in improving the students writing attitude and confidence？

2.Research Participants

The participants involved in the study are 90 students from two paralleled classes in Grade1 （class1 and class 2） in Shaanxi normal university.

3. Research procedures

（1）Pre-experiment stage：

The author assigns a pretest for all the subjects to check whether the students in EG and in CG are paralleled classes. The pretest is assigned at a certain class and the participants are required to finish the task within 30 minutes. Besides， in order to assure the validity of pretest， the writing topic is chosen from CET-4 and writing contents are graded according to the standards in CET-4.endprint

（2）The experiment stage：

All the participants are taught 5 writing classes in one term. In each writing class， students are taught one kind of genre of composition， such as exposition， description and argument. For the purpose of assuring the reliability of the writing topics， the authentic CET-4 writing topics are chosen.

The control group （CG） is conducted in product-oriented approach， which includes assigning writing task， analyzing the task， writing the composition， evaluating students compositions.

The experimental group （EG） is taught the process-oriented approach. The implementation of the process-oriented approach could be divided into seven steps and the details are shown in the following.

A. Brainstorming

In this session， students are encouraged to list all the ideas related to the topic on a piece of paper.

B. Outlining

The teacher asks students to organize their ideas and make an outline.

C. Model presentation

The teacher presents a typical model and then analyzes it in the view of the basic structure， conjunctions used as well as some sophisticated words and phrases.

D. First draft

Students start to write.

E. Peer revising

Students exchange their writings and revise others writings based on a peer revision criteria.

F. Rewriting

Because the limitation of class time， students are required to rewrite their compositions according to the peer revision criteria on the Pigai.com.after class.

G. Teacher's feedback

The teacher uses Pigai.com to revise students writings. In the next class， the teacher will make suggestions about these errors and help students revise their compositions until the final products are perfect.

（3）Post-experiment stage：

The teacher provides a post-test for all the subjects to evaluate studentsEnglish writing ability between EG and CG after the experiment. After the test， 180 compositions were collected and the results of data were analyzed by SPSS 17.0 to find out whether the students had improved their English writing ability or not.

References

[1]鄧鹏鸣， 刘红， 陈亢， 陈艳， 章毓文. 过程写作法的系统研究及其对大学英语写作教学改革的启示[J].《外语教学》 2003，（6）.

[2]张吉生， 周平. 英语写作教学中的结果法与过程法的对比研究[J].《外语与外

语教学》，2002， （9）.

作者简介：姜欣，1994年9月12日出生，女，汉族，河南镇平人，现就读于陕西师范大学外国语学院2016级学科英语专业。主要研究方向：英语教育。endprint