A Study On The Application Of Process-genre Approach To Senior High School English Writing Teaching

Writing, as one of the most important skills in English teaching and learning, has always been a focus of attention among teachers and scholars. The writing objectives in the newly promulgated Senior High School English Curriculum Criterion put a higher demand on students'writing ability, thus, more and more teachers begin to rethink their teaching procedures.Writing, as a means of self-expression, is the students'information output process after the adoption of sufficient input information. The final goal of writing lies in transmitting message effectively. However, in high school English teaching in China, the teaching of writing has been paid insufficient attention to for a long time. It has not achieved the result of effectively transmitting message. Considering the requests of Senior High school English Curriculum Criterion and the assessment standards of the writing part in college entrance examination, we can see that the examinees should not only show correct use of vocabulary, sentence pattern and grammar, they must also have the ability to choose appropriate language according to different literature styles and different linguistic environments. However, the student's present writing level falls behind this kind of request. The domestic and foreign empirical studies on English writing focus mostly on university level students, studies of the writing teaching in senior high schools are extremely insufficient.English writing has always been the weak point in our country's high school English teaching. The teachers do not pay proper attention to students'English writing ability, which leads to a series of problems in students'writing process, the most serious of which is that writing is regarded as a pure process of expressing oneself, without emotional exchange and cooperation with other schoolmates and teachers, thus resulting in the students losing their writing interests. Another problem is that the article revision is limited to grammar correcting and vocabulary choosing, neglecting the ideological nature and integrity of the article. Considering the above mentioned problems existing in the present writing teaching, a study of the writing teaching in senior high school is very necessary and of great practical significance.Since different scholars put emphasis on different teaching approaches as far as English writing is concerned, which approach bears the best teaching result for senior high school English learners is a question worth discussing. The traditional Product-oriented approach showing the function of efficiently improving students'English writing grades, is preferred by many teachers in high school English writing teaching. The Process-genre approach which is proposed by Badger & White (2000) shows that writing should contain such aspects as language knowledge, situational knowledge, writing aim, writing skills and so on. The writing aim, language knowledge, and situational knowledge provide the students with sufficient knowledge input, thus, helping the students obtain enough words and expressions to use in English writing as well as motivating students'writing potential. The training of writing skills enables the students to express themselves.To answer the above question, the thesis introduces the Process-genre approach to English writing teaching, with the aim to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of applying this new teaching approach, checking whether it can inspire students'writing interests, and finally to promote their writing ability more effectively than the traditional product-oriented approach. We took the senior high school students in Hubei Province as the subjects of the study. Based on the questionnaire survey data, the analysis of which showing there exist many problems in the current senior high school students'English writing. The Process-genre approach is introduced and applied to senior high school English writing class, with the experimental class using the Process-genre approach, and the controlled class using the Product-oriented approach. The SPSS13.0 data analysis software is used to analyze the English writing grades of these two classes. The findings indicate that the Process-genre approach has fully combined and displayed advantages of the Product-oriented approach, the Process approach and the Genre-based approach. It stimulates student's writing initiative and creativity. Moreover, the model article reading in the process of writing teaches the students the appropriate language use, which helps to guarantee the quality of their writing. The study on the application of the Process-genre approach in high school English writing teaching also brings us profound enlightenment: to explore and to try new writing teaching approaches to raise students'English writing level is the responsibility and duty of each high school English teacher.The thesis contains six parts. The introduction is about the background and significance of the research. Its also shows the main problems of current senior high school students'writing considering the demanding of Senior High School English Curriculum Criterion, the assessment standards of the writing part in college entrance examination as well as the data analysis result from the questionnaire, pointing out the necessity of reforming the traditional writing teaching model. In the second part, based on the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional English writing approaches, the thesis introduces the definition, the research status and the experimental model of the Process-genre approach. The third part of the thesis focuses on theoretical foundation of the present study. The fourth part deals with the application of the Process-genre approach in senior high school English writing. The fifth part is the findings which indicate that the Process-genre approach can promote students'writing ability more effectively than the traditional product-oriented approach. The last part is the conclusion.