The Study On Teaching Materials For Business Writing

The Chinese economy has been developing quickly as a result of its entry into global market. China is getting actively involved in all kinds of political, economic and cultural exchanges with the international community. It is necessary to cultivate our talents with language skills and cross-culture communicative competence to promote international trade development. As a lubricant in international trade, writing plays a significant role in conducting successful business communication. To meet with the increasing needs of Chinese students and different workplaces requirements, business English writing courses are increasingly offered in quite a lot of colleges, which also bring a wave of new textbooks. These writing textbooks cover different genres and writing techniques. However, the original edition of business writing textbooks from developed countries are very theatrical and require rich working experiences to understand the context and skills. So these textbooks are not helpful and useful in the current undergraduates writing classes. Domestic business writing textbooks are mainly focused on the practical writing which serves for the examination. The content of these textbooks are based on grammar that can not satisfy with the various genre needs of learners in the real workplace. Due to the present status of teaching materials, this essay is contributed to explore a textbook compilation system, namely "Genre-based Business English Writing Textbook". This compilation system is used in foreign language teaching/learning situations and combines the theories of constructivism, ESP and genre writing which is aimed to develop the learner’s writing techniques, generic competence, discourse comprehension ability and intercultural competence.This dissertation is written to argue and explore the application of genre theory in textbook compilation, focusing on the following questions:1) What are the main business English writing textbook in current book markets? What are these authors’standpoints in compiling textbooks?2) What are the main features of current business English writing textbooks? What are the disadvantages in these textbooks and how to improve it?3) How does this research employ the genre theory into business writing textbook compilations? What is genre-based compilation system for business English writing textbook?Through a lot of field work and analysis, this dissertation has made deep exploration into the above questions and produced some arguments of innovative and academic values:1) With genre-based theory, the core of the textbook is generic competence which covers language-related factors and non-linguistic factors. It considers forces outside the individual which help learners guide writing purposes, establish social relationships, and ultimately shape writing in the real workplace. The nature of business writing is to realize the social relationship, rather than the property of individual writers struggling with personal expression. In the actual workplace, it is beneficial to improve communicating efficiency and enhance comprehensive quality and develop learners’standard manipulation.2) With genre-based theory, writing is integrated into business context in textbook design. Each chapter elaborates the knowledge of business context and activities with examples which aims to enrich the learners writing experiences on the social level. In the view of genre theory, the writing course is not only for language practice but to provide channels to improve learners’communication abilities in real workplace. Generic competence replaces the linguistic competence that used to be the key in a business writing syllabus.3) With genre-based theory, the textbook composers can make full use of these writing resources from the business workplace. The Genre theories can be used to direct composers how to design the contents with the real texts.4) With genre-based theory, the principles of business writing pedagogy will be altered. The emphasis in genre-based business writing course is to develop learner’s generic competence which includes linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge. Teaching objectives will be "learners are able to conduct effective communication in business context." rather than "learners are able to finish the writing in fixed time." This could lead to the changes in model of instruction in business writing class and new teaching elements will be added into classroom, such as virtual business situation and computer assistant system.This dissertation is composed of seven chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to this dissertation. Chapter two is written to have a general review of the relevant literature, such as theories about English learning context, genre theories and business English related theories. Based on that, this chapter tries to explore some developing trends of theories in support of the present study. In chapter three, it found the content, writing angle, writing methods and main genres in business writing textbooks through thoroughly arranging and analyzing business English textbooks in the current market and research on business practitioners and learners. The analysis is based on both quantitative and qualitative data-collection. Chapter four follows chapter three which explores the weakness in current textbooks and advanced solutions. Chapter five is focused on the application of genre theory to conduct these solutions that were developed in chapter four. Following these researches, chapter six works out a genre-based business English writing textbook compilation system whose intent is to improve the current situation of business English writing text books and stimulate the learners’enthusiasm and interests. Thus the learners can cope with the writing tasks in the future workplace. This compilation system contains the design of general structure of the textbook, structure of each chapter, materials selection, task, criteria and self-assessment.There are also some problems in the course of studying. Firstly, the textbook composition requires the writer to have a lot of infomation literacy and high level of linguistic competence. During the process of writing, the design of contents and tasks need the real language in the current workplace, so the writer must be familiar with the working language and can transfer these materials into the textbook for learning purposes. Secondly, the investigation of textbooks is not enough. This study merely selects the commonly used writing textbooks, but other textbooks, such as listening, reading, translating, do require further research. The use of business genre is not only for the writing, it also relates with other English activities. Again, it should be enhanced with the growth of international trade. Meanwhile, the task assessment system needs to be improved. The writing process is aimed to produce the text which is the final result of writing study. Learners can find their problems in writing and improve their writing skills through a well-designed assessment system. It corresponds with the key of learners-centered pedagogies. Finally, this essay does not construct a system of textbook evaluation. With the development of future teaching, it is necessary to generate the evaluation of textbook compiling in the view of genre that can be used to revise the teaching materials.To sum up, this research integrates the genre theories with textbook compiling theories and communicative competence theories to explore the genre-based business English writing textbook compilation system. Most importantly, the author hopes to arise more attention to and interest in business English writing textbook compiling from the higher education administration and academia which can promote a healthy, orderly development of writing textbooks and teaching through research in this dissertation. It can help the learners to develop an international perspective, to adapt to globalization, cross-cultural environment and the innovative spirit of international, professional personnel.