An Empirical Study Of College English Writing Based On A Process Approach

English writing is an important part in English test, for English writmg proficiency reflects the English learner's language ability. However, Chinese college students are always poor at it and find it hard to improve their English writing ability. Traditionally, teachers apply product approach in teaching writing, which is based on students' writing and teachers' grading, and stresses on the quantity of the writing products. This approach has been increasingly questioned by many English teachers nowadays.Since 1980s, the process approach rose and has been positively introduced by some English teachers. It lays emphasis on the procedures in the course of writing,.The present study attempts to compare the process approach with the product approach in an empirical investigation. 120 fresh men, from Yangtze University, majoring in environmental engineering, accounting, law and Chinese, were chosen as subjects in this empirical study. Pretest and posttest papers as well as two questionnaires were employed as instruments .The results of the questionnaires reveal that the process approach can stimulate the students' interest in writing, and consequently inspire their affection in learning English. The data from the pretest and posttest of English writing scores are entered into a computer and the statistical software SPSS 14.0 was used to analyze the figures. A t-test was conducted to examine the difference between the students in two groups about their English writing proficiency. The finding is that the process approach can help to raise the students' English writing proficiency significantly.This study holds considerable pedagogical implications. As for English teachers, it is necessary to fully understand the roles of teachers and students in teaching and learning course. It is their duty to provide a more flexible learning environment to the learners. This study is theoretically and practically significant to the study on English teaching, in particular, teaching of college English writing.