Towards A Macro-Model Of Teaching English Writing In Zhejiang Radio & TV Universities

Teaching English writing has always been a daunting task for many ELI practitioners in the Chinese context. Successful completion of the task involves various factors such as teaching aims, learner characteristics, teaching materials and their interactive relationships and influences on English language teaching, and an analysis of the educational background in Zhejiang Radio & TV Universities in these areas does not only serve as a starting point, but also lays the foundation for the Macro-model of English Writing Teaching that is ultimately aimed at developing in this dissertation. ELT theories such as communicative language teaching theories, second language acquisition theories, which have grown out of many years of theoretical and field researches, are an indispensable support to any feasible writing teaching and learning approaches both in and out of the classroom. Many writing approaches have been introduced over the years into the Chinese language classrooms, and the communicative approach, process and genre approaches to teaching writing have proved to be extremely useful, and therefore, should be incorporated and adopted in the Macro-model. Student errors have always been a window for detecting weaknesses and even failures resulted in a language programme, and they can also serve as justification for appropriate learning methods and teaching approaches. All these are a basis on which the Macro-model is established that embraces areas of learner autonomy, instructional procedures, evaluation and related issues that are characteristics of English writing teaching in Zhejiang Radio & TV Universities.