A Discourse-based Teaching Model Of EFL Writing For Non-English Majors

English writing is one of the four fundamental skills of English, and the importance of English writing has been intensified by the economic globalization and internet revolution due to the special role of English as a universal language. However, as for many college students in China, their performance in English writing is at a low level, especially, their discourse deficiency stand out. Many researchers have made surveys on the English writing of Chinese college students and discovered that their compositions commonly display their writing problems at discourse level: 1) the overall structure is poorly organized; 2) cohesive devices are rarely or mistakenly used; 3) coherence is hardly reached; 4) theme and rheme is randomly chosen, without effectively delivering messages to readers.It is obvious that the traditional product-oriented EFL writing approach fails to solve such kinds of problems because it lays overemphasis on the aspects of lexicon and syntax. But discourse analysis theories bring new insights to the teaching of EFL writing so that the writing problems at discourse level can be easily tackled because "discourse analysis pays particular attention to the ways that language in context is organized at and above the level of the sentence (Ellen Barton, 2002)". The aim of study in discourse analysis is the structure and function of language in use, therefore, many theories such as discourse types, discourse patterns, cohesion and coherence can be applied to EFL writing to make great contribution to students' EFL writing competence.Inspired by the potential contributions discourse analysis will make to EFL writing, stimulated by the students' EFL writing deficiency at discourse level, the author of this thesis manages to propose a teaching model of EFL writing for non-English majors in China. This model is discourse-based, integrating writing with reading and taking the advantages of process approach. It aims to apply the discourse analysis theories into the practice of EFL writing teaching, to embed writing instruction in reading teaching. The model is designed to fit the current unique situation of EFL writing for non-English majors, and is expected to facilitate the writing competence of non-English majors in China.This teaching model has more advantages than the traditional product-oriented writing approach. The model can make greater contribution to the students' EFL writing competence at discourse level because some theories of discourse analysis relevant to EFL writing are applied to the model. In addition, the model can more efficiently facilitate students' EFL writing in an all-around way because the model combines the activity of reading with that of writing, which guarantees the high quality output of EFL writing in the condition of adequate input of EFL reading. Finally, the model can arouse students' interest in EFL writing because the model adopts process approach, which is concerned with the emotional factors of writers in the process of writing and the effect of writing process on the final product of writing.An empirical study is conducted in this thesis in order to test the effects of the teaching model. 124 non-English major sophomores of Henan University of Science and Technology have participated as subjects in the experiment, who come from two classes, and one class act as an experimental group (EG) and another as a control group (CG). In the condition that the relevant independent variables are controlled, different teaching approaches are adopted in EG and CG to carry out English writing instruction. The teaching model is employed in the experimental group while the traditional product -oriented approach is used in the control group. In the process of the experiment, two writing tests respectively serving as the pretest and posttest are carried out. The data are input into computers and SPSS is used to process them. The results of the empirical study shows that the teaching model is more effective in improving the students' EFL writing competence compared with the traditional writing approach.