The Effect of Production-Oriented Approach on College Students’ English Writing Performance

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study compared the effects of the Production-Oriented Approach (POA) and the traditional Product Approach on college students’ English writing performance. Participants were 58 second-year non-English major students from two intact classes at a university in Hubei Province. The experimental group of 29 students received POA instruction, and the control group of 29 students received Product Approach instruction over a six-week intervention. Writing pretest and posttest were administered. Data were analyzed using independent-samples t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Mann-Whitney U test. Results showed that: (1) there was no significant difference between the two groups in the pretest; (2) the experimental group made significant progress from pretest to posttest, with an effect size of r = 0.77 (large effect), while the control group did not; (3) between-group comparisons revealed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in both posttest scores and gain scores, although the effect size for gain scores was r = 0.26 (small effect). It is concluded that POA is statistically superior to the Product Approach. This study provides empirical evidence for the application of POA in writing instruction.