Process-genre Approach In Teaching English Writing

As one of the most important skills and the significant means of communication, writing in English has been widely used in many fields. However, acquiring the writing skill seems to be most laborious and demanding, particularly for foreign language learners. Furthermore, the traditional teaching method to some degree fails to improve learners'writing ability. Therefore, it is very necessary to study writing instruction so that teachers can help learners master the skill.First of all, the author of the thesis briefly introduces the theories of genres and genre analysis. For quite a long time, genre remains a fuzzy concept. Until recently, a lot of research on composition has contributed to a reconception of the rhetorical concept of genre on social lines. Some scholars consider genre as dynamic, participatory, situated social actions which are recognizable communicative purposes identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or community in which it regularly occurs. This makes the discourses of the same genre have the same schematic structure and this schematic structure, in turn, affects the content and the style of the discourses. Genre analysis, therefore, aims at the studies of the communicative purposes of a discourse and the language-using strategies. By analyzing a genre, we can answer this question: why people tend to use these words and this style rather than others when constructing a certain type of discourse.The author then introduces three approaches established in the field of writing instruction: product approach, process approach, and genre approach. The product approach holds successful writing is based on one's linguistic knowledge and therefore emphasizes the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax, but it neglects the development of students'writing at textual level.The process approach is based on the theory of communication which describes writing process as a communicative activity instead of a 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 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 classroom teaching cannot cover all the genres students will encounter in future life.Thirdly, the author analyzes writing from three different perspectives: social perspective, cognitive perspective and linguistic perspective. Socially, writing is a way of communication. It is treated as an interaction between writers and readers. Because language is indispensable to society and people use language to contact others as well as to make sense of the world, writers need to consider both audience and communicative purpose in writing. Cognitively, writing is a process of discovering meaning and solving problems. When people write, they must analyze and synthesize information. In this way, writing is an important tool of learning, which involves critical thinking and discovery of what one knows and believes. Linguistically, writing involves employing language knowledge at various levels of words, syntactic structures, and discourse structures as codes to express a meaning.After the comparison of the established approaches, analyzing writing from three different perspectives, and a consideration of the nature of writing, it is suggested that the process-genre approach (Badger and White, 2000), a combination of the three above approaches, is most effective and feasible in instruction, but Badger and White do not offer the operative steps. The author finally supplies the stages to operate by in the writing classroom according to the framework of the approach, and these stages are applied in the teaching of writing application letters. To maximize the efficiency of its application, the author proposes some pedagogical techniques when this approach is applied to application letters writing instruction.