An Experimental Research Of Process-genre Approach To College English Writing Teaching

With the development of economic globalization, and the enhancement of China's opening-up policy as well as China's entry into WTO, more and more attention is being paid to English writing. However, college students'writing performance is unsatisfactory. Therefore, improving non-English majors'English writing proficiency and seeking for effective solution is of great importance.There are three popular approaches to writing teaching:the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach, but none is very effective in practice. In order to fully give play to advantages of each approach, Badger and White suggest an integrated model:the process-genre approach (2000). The process-genre approach, based on the theories of Construction, Interaction and Collaborative Learning as well as Genre, has become a research focus for scholars and language teachers at home and abroad.This study reviews the development of L2 writing at home and abroad and the three traditional writing teaching methods used in China, and expounds the related research on the process-genre approach and concludes that these achievements are of significant value for reference to improve Chinese EFL learners'English writing proficiency. However, the studies on practical effect of the process-genre approach seem to be rare.To explore the effectiveness of the process-genre approach, the teaching experiment is conducted to test whether the process-genre approach could provide much help for improvement of the college students' writing proficiency. It was conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2009-2010 and lasted a term (15 weeks). Two separate classes of 80 non-English major sophomores from Dezhou College were chosen as subjects in the experiment. It attempted to address the following four questions:(1)To what extent is the process-genre approach more effective than the traditional product approach in teaching writing?(2)In what aspects can the process-genre approach improve the students'writing ability? (3)What effect will the process-genre approach have on students'writing attitude and habits?(4)What are the subjects'perceptions of the teaching guided by the process-genre approach?Software SPSS is then adopted to make the statistic analysis to investigate the differences in students'writing performance between the two groups of students before and after a semester's treatment by adopting different approaches. The whole experiment is divided into three phases:the pre-test, the mid-test test and the post-test. Based on the data collected, the following findings were made:(1)There is a statistically significant difference in the writing scores between the students who have received the process-genre approach and those who have not.(2)The process-genre approach can improve the students'writing ability in arranging the structure, using the language and choosing the content.(3)Under the guidance of the process-genre approach, students have positively changed their attitudes toward writing after about one-term systematic practice. They have more interest in writing; more importantly, they have a tendency to develop a good habit of writing.(4)Students consider the process-genre teaching guidance a useful way to improve writing ability, and they are eager to learn writing with more confidence.The process-genre writing teaching approach effectively improves non-English majors'writing ability and does change their writing attitudes and habits to some degree. At. the same time, the author discusses the pedagogical implications of the approach to writing teaching. Though we have got a satisfied result in the experiment, there are many limitations and deficiency. The author hopes to provide some insights in this and therefore help college students improve their writing proficiency through the effective writing teaching approach.