Chinese University Students Of Non-english Majors Writing Teaching And Research

This thesis discusses EFL writing teaching for non-English majors in Chinese colleges and universities with a strong desire to find effective approaches to it. The author first presents the current unoptimistic teaching situation, and then focuses on two aspects to solve the problems: students' understanding of EFL writing and the teaching approach of EFL writing. Regarding the problems in students' negative attitude and vague understanding of EFL writing, the author poses some suggestions from the perspective of students' learning psychology: having students realize the importance of English writing; giving students appropriate response; and demystifying the writing process into several stages and helping students dispel frightening preconception on writing. The main solution is given from the perspective of teaching approach. The author advocates incorporating the text-model approach with the process approach by reviewing the main writing teaching approaches in ELT history. The process approach to writing teaching has many positive aspects, and much of its value has derives from its invigorating effect on classroom writing practices and its recognition of the importance of the experiences that learners bring with them to the classroom. However, it has its limitations and cannot be seen as answering all the needs of EFL/ESL students. The text-model approach is put forward to make up the defects of the process approach. Developed on the basis of the text-based approach, the text-model approach takes advantage of the strengths of the discourse approach and genre approach and aims at solving the problem of form both linguistically and generically. Following this approach, the teacher can provide good models for writing indirectly by encouraging good reading habits and directly, when appropriate, by analyzing textual characteristics. Having access to authentic text models, students can add to their own imaginative resources and become aware not only of how to write, but of what to write.