The Process-Genre Approach And The Implication To Teaching Of College English Writing

English writing skill has been treated as a focus of language teaching and research. However, writing was always regarded as the most difficult one of the four basic language skills. Since 1960s, four approaches have been applied, that are the Product Approach, the Process Approach, the Genre Approach, and the Process-Genre approach. In China, studies of these approaches have 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 have drawn more and more teachers'and experts'attention. But all these three approaches have some limitations. So Badger and White integrated them and put forward the Process-Genre approach to exert their strengths and avoid their weakness.The principle of the Process-Genre Approach are: writing reflects a communicative purpose and concerns with a social context; through the analysis of model text and discussion with classmates and teachers, learners can get input from teachers, classmates and text; in the process of writing, learners can get both linguistic knowledge and strategy training.An experiment of applying the Process-Genre Approach was carried out for three months. The participants are 60 English major sophomores who come from two classes of Liaoning Normal University. Questionnaire and interview were also conducted to the students. The hypothesis is that the Process-Genre Approach can improve students'writing ability in various aspects. By analyzing the data of the experiment and the result of the questionnaire and interview, the author got a positive answer to the hypothesis. At last, the author gives four pedagogical implications based on the Process-Genre Approach.