Genre Analysis And English Writing Teaching At College

Given the importance of English as an international language, more and more people need to learn to write in English for occupational or academic purposes. The ability of English writing is especially an indispensable skill for college and university students who will play important roles in the construction of the country. Although English teaching has received more and more attention, proper emphasis has not been put on English writing teaching. But fortunately, researchers abroad or at home have begun to conduct lots of researches into English writing instruction.In the present thesis, the author studies the role of genre in the teaching of writing in university or college EFL classrooms. First of all, the paper gives a definition to "genre" by referring to the definition given by Zhang Delu (2002). It also reviews the development of genre analysis and discusses Hasan's theoretical framework of genre analysis.Hasan is one of the earliest functional linguists who conduct the research of genre. She put forward the theory of generic structural potential (GSP). In this theory, three points should be paid attention to: 1). Contextual Configuration (CC), which is a set of values of the three variables of context of situation?field, tenor, and mode, can predict the structural elements of texts, and iteration of the elements and their sequence; 2). Every genre has its own GSP, which includes obligatory elements, optional elements, and their iteration and sequence, so, in this way, it means that the three variables of CC can predict GSP of a genre; 3). A genre is defined by the obligatory elements, i.e., the texts which possess the same obligatory elements belong to the same genre. From such concepts concerned in the genre theoretical framework as context of culture, context of situation, semantic structure and linguistic forms, we can see their pedagogical implications in EFL writing teaching.Then, the present writer states the present situation of EFL writing teaching in China. The greatest difficulty students encounter in English writing is the fear ofwriting which comes from three kinds of sources: psychological problems, linguistic problems and cognitive problems that inevitably overlap to some extent. Meanwhile, the present writing teaching syllabus and textbooks do not pay enough attention to the role of genre in EFL writing instruction, but writing teaching should be instructed at the textual level after students obtain a certain English proficiency.In the field of writing instruction, three approaches have been established: product approach, process approach, and genre approach. The product approach holds successful writing is based on one's linguistic knowledge and therefore emphasizes correct usage, correct grammar, and correct spelling, but it neglects the development of students' writing at textual level.The process approach is based on the theory of communication that describes writing process as a communicative activity instead of the writer's personal activity. It advocates the introduction of relevant topics, class discussion, brainstorming, multiple drafting, revision and realistic tasks into curriculum. However, it ignores the variation in discourse types and in students' level. And it assumes that the writer already has all the resources he needs for writing.The genre-based approach takes the purpose of writing into consideration and gives particular attention to the rhetorical organization of the texts. It has been found very effective in that it provides models of different genres for students to learn from. On the other hand, its disadvantages have also become apparent. For example, it's too text-centered and neglects creative classroom activities and writing skills. What is more, classroom teaching cannot cover all the genres students will encounter in future life.After the comparison of the established approaches and a consideration of the nature of writing, it is suggested that the process-genre approach (Badger & White, 2000), a combination of the three above approaches, is most...