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Revision of plenary speech given at the international conference, Faces of English: Theory, Practice and Pedagogy, held at the Center for Applied English Studies of Hong Kong University from 11 to 13 June 2015.
1. Introduction
The POA has been developed over the past decade with the aim of improving English classroom instruction at the tertiary level in Mainland China (Wen 2007, 2008, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c). Unlike other instructional approaches for language learning, the POA starts teaching with language production and ends with production while input serves as an enabler to help accomplish productive activities. The term ‘production’ is used here instead of ‘output’ simply because it includes not only speaking and writing but also translation and interpreting. Furthermore, the POA is most suitable to young adult learners with intermediate level proficiency in English or above who have already finished learning basic English grammar and have about 2,000 or more high-frequency words. In Mainland China, university freshmen are just such learners who typically have a relatively large amount of receptive knowledge but limited experience using English for communication. For these reasons, their usual abilities in English do not satisfy employers, parents, or government officials. The POA has been developed as a potential remedy to this situation and through its use university students are expected to be able to participate actively in genuine communicative activities.
I address the POA and related issues under the following headings:
1. English instruction at the undergraduate level in Mainland China
2. Development of and justifications for the POA
3. The description and explanation of the POA
2. Current English instruction at the undergraduate level
The pedagogical methods used in mainstream education in Mainland China are characterized as being text-centered and input-based. That is to say, English instruction takes the text as an end rather than a means, and input-processing is the major learning task. Such English instruction can at most enhance students’ comprehension skills. Generally, text-centered and input-based instruction is of two kinds: bottom-up (popular from the 1950s onwards to the mid-1990s and still used in some remote areas in China) and top-down (increasingly dominant since the late 1990s) (Wen 2014a). The deficiency in bottom-up instruction is too much emphasis on individual language items without prompting learners...