Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
Writing is usually attached great importance and should be thought highly of by us EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers and learners. Harmer(2017) indicates that writing encourages students to focus on accurate language usage and reflective thinking of students during the writing process. It has been one of the most powerful ways to intensify learners’ language learning. The ability to write is crucial to an English learner. Writing along with speaking, belongs to the production skills; it is believed to help students internalize the target language (Wang Chuming, 2017). Students’ fundamental ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing are to be trained to achieve the purpose of English teaching in senior middle high school; in order to develop students' ability of using English, improving their writing skills is a must. However, writing has always been a great challenge for senior high school students, for the phenomenon that students think there is nothing to write about and it is difficult for them to learn to write, while teachers find it weary and tedious to teach something about writing. Although students have been studying for years and also have written many essays, yet there is still little progress (Dai Weidong，英语论文网站，英语论文题目，2017；Zhou Yan, 2017). In middle school English teaching in China, the teaching of writing is always the weakness in the English teaching in senior high school. Teachers’ feedback about students’ article (product) usually comes to a simple mark or corrections which mainly focus on spelling, grammar mistakes, transitional words, coherence and so on, instead of students’ ideas and comprehensive writing ability. This writing process is almost like mechanic imitation, so the result is that students still do not know how to write after some time of training, and the students’ creativity is suppressed, making many students eventually lose interest and confidence in it (Teng Chunhong, 1993).
........
1.2 The purpose of the study
The purpose of this study is to examine how the process writing approach works in EFL writing class in senior high schools; whether it is able to improve students’ writing skills and ability; whether the process approach is a valuable method for EFL teachers who want to improve the writing of their students. Particularly, the students’ writing performance and grades before and after carrying out the process approach is compared. & |
