Application of Production-Oriented Approach in College English Instruction in China: A Case Study

With effective learning as its core principle, Production-oriented Approach (POA) was developed to address the problems of English classroom instruction in China, such as text-centeredness, the separation of learning and using and “dumb English”. This study applied POA to college English classroom instruction in order to examine its effects on English learning and explore its implications for English instruction in the EFL context. Twenty-two second-year students majoring in Applied English in a Sino-US cooperative education program participated in the study. Data were collected through questionnaires distributed to the students at the end of each unit and the semester, and semi-structured interviews with fifteen participants to elicit information about students’ motivation, engagement, reflections upon their learning process, and perceptions on the POA class. A variety of assessment tools, including the Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment approach, were applied to evaluate students’ performance and progress. The study revealed that POA played a positive role in stimulating students’ learning motivation and enhancing students’ communicative competence, especially in speaking and writing. However, the implementation of POA should also be adapted to learner’s variables and needs so that POA can realize its values and create successful results in practice.