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The Product Approach Vs. The Process-genre Approach: A Comparative Study Of Two Methods Of Teaching English Writing To College Students

Posted on:2009-07-30Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:M Y HeFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360242496312Subject:Education Technology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
EFL writing ability is one of the most important skills in foreign language learning and teaching, so it has been widely considered in second language acquisition. In the world, from 1960s, a series of approaches have been explored and applied, among which the Product Approach, the Process Approach, the Genre Approach, and the Process-genre Approach are popular. In China, for more than ten years, the studies of these approaches have also made great achievement. It is widely accepted that the Product Approach has played a dominant role for decades, but in recent years, the Process Approach, the Genre Approach, and the Process-genre Approach have drawn more and more teachers' and experts' attention. The Process Approach, the Genre Approach, and the Process-genre Approach have their own advantages and disadvantages respectively, so Badger and White integrated them and put forward the Process-genre Approach to exert their strengths and avoid their weakness, but it does not mean that this integrated approach is appropriate for all the colleges and universities. In 2007, College English Curriculum Requirements was issued, which establishes Basic Requirements, Intermediate Requirements, and Advanced Requirements for listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. Meanwhile, it points out that the three requirements serve as the reference stands for colleges and universities in preparing their own College English teaching document. They could, in the light of their respective circumstances, make due adjustments to the specific requirement. As for secondary-ranked colleges and universities, they can not set up the courses for listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation respectively, so the students' five skills must be fostered in their "Integrated English Course". Additionally, they are confronted with limited 4 class periods per week, big class size of about 50 students per class, and different backgrounds of the students resources and faculty resources. Therefore, this thesis attempts to conduct an experimental research of the EFL classroom writing in the "Integrated Course" among the freshmen of the secondary-ranked colleges and universities by comparing the advantages and disadvantages between the traditional Product Approach with the newly established Process-genre Approach. The research is carried out among the freshmen of China West Normal University. It aims to provide a more practical and feasible approach to solve the problem and enhance the EFL writing competence of the students from secondary-ranked colleges and universities. The study is carried out by an experiment on the Control Class and the Experimental Class conducted by the Product Approach and the Process-genre Approach respectively for a semester. Questionnaires and three tests are used to analyze the result of the experiment.By analyzing the students' responses to Questionnaire I (before the experiment) and Questionnaire II (at the end of the experiment), the thesis aims to compare the student's changes, after a semester, in EFL writing in the aspects of their interest, confidence, English language knowledge, writing habits, mother tongue transfer, etc.—the major elements related to EFL writing. The study finds that the students in the Control Class are obviously more serious than the students in the Experimental Class in the aspects of their dependence on the teachers, their lack of confidence and interest to EFL writing and cooperation with their peers, and their lack of genre awareness. But the biggest achievement for the Control Class is that they makes a great progress in the most difficult aspect of EFL writing, English language. While they also share the serious weakness of their lack of habits to get feedback and information from various sources, and the positive and negative transfer of Chinese. By analyzing the students' scores of the pre-test, the mid-test, and the post-test, the thesis compares the differences of the two classes' EFL writing levels in the items of Content, Organization, and Language in different stages of the experiment. The study finds that there are slight differences between the Control Class and the Experimental Class in the three stages: at the beginning when the students have not received the experimental training, in the middle when students have received nearly two months experimental training, and at the end when students have received almost 4 months training.By analyzing the students' general writing change in the items of Content, Organization, and Language from the beginning to the end of the experiment, the thesis compares the improvement of the student's scores and draws the general trends of the two classes. The study finds out that Content was highest; Organization was next; and Language was last. As for the changing trend, the rising trend of Content of the Control Class is steady, while it is obviously unsteady in the Experimental Class; the rising trend of Organization is almost steady in the two classes; the rising trend of Language of the Control Class is obviously higher than that of the Experimental Class. Both of their rising trends in the first stage are obviously higher than that of the second stage, and the whole trends in the two classes are obviously unsteady.Therefore, the thesis points out that the traditional Product Approach is more effective and feasible to teach EFL writing to the students of secondary-ranked colleges and universities, because it is more effective to deal with the most serious problem of the students' English Language knowledge, which is the critical factor to hinder students' English writing, and the most difficult skill to improve. But the author also points out the Product Approach should be applied within a limited time proportion in the class period for writing so that we can avoid the sheer teacher-centered teaching model; Since writing is only one of the tasks in the integrated classroom course, and since listening and speaking are emphasized by Requirements, student-centered model should be advocated.
Keywords/Search Tags:the secondary-ranked colleges and universities, classroom English writing, the Product Approach, the Process-genre Approach, comparative study
PDF Full Text Request
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