Exploration Of The Process-genre Approach To Teaching English Writing

As one of the significant means of communication, writing in English has been widelyused in many fields. However, writing is a complex activity and probably the most difficultof all the macro-skills--- listening, speaking, reading and writing. And even many nativespeakers can never master this kind of skills. For foreign language learners, the challengesare more enormous. Therefore, it is very necessary to study writing instruction so thatteachers can help learners to master the skills. In China, there are a lot of college students whose writing ability in English is very poor.This can be illustrated by the fact that their mean scores of compositions in CET4 and TEM4are both far below the passing point. While writing, students usually meet a variety ofdifficulties. In general, these difficulties are fallen into two categories. One is that students donot know what to write, the other is that they do not know how to write. Faced with these difficulties, some teachers and researchers have introduced variousteaching approaches to English writing. Of them, there are three approaches that are morepopular, that is, the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach. As aresult, teaching materials of English writing which follow the three approaches are published. However, through specific teaching practice, people have found that the three approachesall have their own strengths and weaknesses. In order to exert their strengths and overcometheir weaknesses, Richard Badger and Goodith White (2000) put forward the process-genreapproach to teaching writing--- an integration of the three approaches. It begins with thesituation which gives rise to a particular genre of writing, and then the students produce somewriting in line with their own needs supported by the teacher, their peers and sample texts. Nevertheless, the theoretical basis of the process-genre approach has not been explicitlyexpounded to this day. In China, in particular, few people have got knowledge of theapproach, not to mention its application in EFL teaching. Furthermore, Badger and White(2000) have not given specific teaching procedures that teachers can operate directly.Although some researchers (Han Jinlong, 2001; Wang Hongguang, 2002) have broughtforward their own teaching procedures and suggestions, they are not detailed enough. Therefore, this thesis attempts to explore the theoretical basis of the process-genreapproach. And then based on Badger and White's (2000) teaching model, it puts forward aseries of teaching procedures as well as the theoretical foundation and the strengths of theseprocedures. Furthermore, this thesis also provides a demonstration of the approach in order tomake readers know about the approach more clearly. In the end, this thesis discusses theimplications of the approach for classroom teaching and material design, in order thatteachers can obtain some help while teaching English writing and adapting materials. In short, this thesis makes a specific exploration of the process-genre approach to theteaching of English writing. It is suggested that this study can be revealing to teachers andresearchers, helping to popularize this approach among teachers so as to improve the teachingof English writing.