A Study Of Genre-based Teaching Approach In Improving Students' English Writing Ability In High School

In English teaching and learning in China, writing has been a focus of attention among teachers and scholars. Writing skill is one of the most important skills students should master. This thesis intends to present genre-based teaching approach that is good for teaching writing in high schools. Genre-based teaching approach is based on genre theory. It is the application of genre analysis. It aims to improve students'writing abilities by providing them with genre knowledge.In the first place, the author states the present situation of English writing in high school in China. The greatest difficulty which students encounter in English writing is the fear of writing which comes from three kinds of sources: psychological problems, linguistic problems and cognitive problems that inevitably overlap to some extent. When stating the function of writing, the author suggests that the purpose of writing teaching is to train students'communication capabilities with complete, appropriate and coherent text. In the past field of writing teaching, the scholars and teachers pay more attention to two approaches: product approach and process approach. The product approach holds a monopoly and is based on one's linguistic knowledge and therefore emphasizes correct usage, correct grammar, and correct spelling, but it neglects the development of students'writing at textual level. The process approach is based on the theory of communication that describes writing process as a communicative activity instead of the 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 character of the article's genre and the input of linguistic knowledge. Obviously, these two approaches cannot meet the demand of the students. Therefore, a genre-based approach, which emphasizes the schematic structures of different discourses as well as the grammar, should be adopted in order to meet the demand of the students both in the tests and in their future careers. A new teaching pattern is provided——genre-based teaching approach to teach writing.Secondly, the author introduces the theory basis of genre-based teaching approach: genre, genre analysis, schematic structure, Krashen's input hypothesis, Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, cognitive psychology and constructivism. The genre-based teaching approach has three schools: the field of ESP and EAP, New Rhetoric and Australian School. Genre-based teaching approach has the advantages: it can greatly increase the students'writing confidence and develop creativity potential; it can indicate the direction in discourse analysis for students and focus on the training of language ability; it can deal with three questions which writing task must resolve: (1) the determination of content of a limited subject (2) the choice of language performance way (3) what kind of rhetoric to organize the chosen content and language performance.Thirdly, the author states that it's necessary to carry on genre-based teaching approach for English writing teaching in high school. In the past, writing teaching had been neglected for a long time and little had been done to improve the worrying situation. It still hesitates at the stage of the product approach or the process approach. Most teachers focus their attention on the products of the students'writing, and ignore the process of writing. As a result, a lot of students are gradually losing their interest and confidence in English writing. Therefore, we should utilize the genre-based teaching approach in the writing teaching and unifies the classroom instruction and the practical application. According to the understanding of the genre-based teaching approach and combine her own teaching experience, the author thinks that writing teaching using genre analysis should include the following four phases: genre analysis——input phase, imitation analysis——internalization, independent writing——output phase, teacher comments——improvement phase.Next, the author makes an experiment and a survey to prove that two hypothesis are correct: (1) the genre-based teaching approach can improve the students'writing ability better than the product teaching approach; (2) the genre-based teaching approach can improve the students'writing interest, develop the students'good writing habits, enhance the capacity to resolve problems and the confidence of writing better than the product teaching approach.This study has considerable pedagogical implications for high school English teaching, but more and more teachers in high schools have pay attention to the importance of genre-based teaching approach: the teachers are advised to develop students'awareness of genre-based teaching approach and apply genre and genre analysis theory to writing teaching. During the implementation of genre-based teaching approach, teachers should further improve the students'writing ability by using the generic structure and linguistic features of a certain genre.