The Impact of Production-oriented Approach on Oral English Performance of Senior High School Chinese Students: An Application Study

Abstract

The Chinese education system has traditionally been textbook-oriented and focuses on rote learning. Distinct drawbacks and issues from rote learning have affected Chinese students' oral English learning. Thus, there is a pedagogical shift to task-based or project-centered learning approaches in recent years, focusing on applied learning. Wen (2017) created a distinctive foreign language pedagogy known as the Production-Oriented Approach (POA). The past five years have seen research carried out on the effectiveness and applicability of POA on productive skills in university contexts; however, few empirical investigations were carried out on the efficacy of POA on high school students. This study thus attempts to apply POA in oral English classes at a senior high school, specifically focusing on whether POA improves these students' oral performance and explores their acceptance of the POA. After 12 weeks of treatment, quantitative analysis of both the pre and post-tests revealed a significant improvement in the experimental class and minimal improvement in the controlled class. Additional findings discovered by qualitative analysis illustrated that the students were also satisfied with the POA used in oral English classrooms. It is implied that the POA application effectively enhances the students' learning of oral English skills.