The Application Of The Process Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior Middle Schools

In EFL teaching, the training of writing skills has always been one of the main concerns of all English teachers. In the last decades, the teaching of English writing has seen great dramatic changes. Numerous successful researches and practice have gradually enriched writing theories and formed a series of effective approaches to the teaching of writing, among which the process approach has become prevalent in many foreign countries and proved to be effective in improving EFL students' writing abilitities. But in China, especially in senior middle schools, English writing has long a neglected area and little has been done to improve the worrying situation. It still hesitates at the stage of the product approach. Most teachers focus their attention on the products of the students' writing, and ignore the process of writing. As a result, writing is inevitably seen as a tedious chore for all involved. And many students are gradually losing their interest and confidence in English writing, and some of them even deliberately avoid English writing tasks. Some middle school English teachers and researchers have put forward some suggestions to improve students' writing abilities, but little research is on the process of students' writing. The author thinks that the more the students know about their writing process, the more consciously they will try to improve their writing ability.Based on Flower and Hayes' cognitive process theory of writing, this paper attempts to introduce the process approach to English writing teaching into senior middle school classrooms. It is intended to make the students aware of the process of their writing, to arouse their interest in English writing and reestablish their confidence in their own writing by creating meaningful, positive and purposeful writing activities, and to gradually improve their writing abilities as well. In the process of writing teaching, the author's focus is on how her students write, in other words, looking upon the process of writing as opposed to the final product. By providing relaxing, positive, and encouraging writing environment, the author organizes varying activities, such as prewriting (including quickwriting and planning), the first drafting, peer reviewing, redrafting, teacher response, final drafting, etc. and instructs her students at differentstages to rewrite and revise their drafts to generate and develop the new ideas and enrich the content.The results of the research show that the author has got preliminary success by using the process approach. The students have not only changed their attitudes to English writing, but also gained greater confidence in it.Of course, no approach can solve all problems, the process approach has its own limitations, too. The main problem is that, because of no writing class being offered, it is impossible to implement the process writing approach all the way in middle school English teaching. But the author's experience demonstrates that two activities should be included in writing class: prewriting activity and peer reviewing activity.These limitations notwithstanding, the implications of the findings in this study for English writing teaching in the future are considered: students should be made aware of the process of their owning writing, prewriting and peer review are important stages that should be included in the process of writing teaching.To sum up, the shift from the product-oriented approach to process-oriented approach doesn't mean to abandon the product approach. The main focus is to make students understand the real relationship between writing and developing ideas. Learning to grasp writing mechanics such as grammatical rules, text structure and vocabulary itself is not the purpose of writing but the means to express one's ideas. If the students can learn how to generate their ideas, clarify and develop their ideas in the process of writing to achieve their final ami-communication hi the real world, their final products would be more creative, active, expressive and convincing.