| Nowadays, English writing is widely used in many communicative fields and it is one of the four basic capabilities as well as the learner's language skills. Developing the English writing skills effectively promotes the internalization of linguistic knowledge. The current writing is easily ignored in the English classroom and teachers always pay more attention to the scores of Level-A and CET-4. Moreover, it is also regarded as the most difficult and weakest part for both students and teachers. Therefore, it is very essential to research writing instruction seriously in order that teachers are able to help students to improve English writing skills and master writing abilities.In Chapter One Introduction, the author demonstrates the need and significance for the research as well as some problems we have confronted. In the Chapter two, there are three approaches of teaching writing: the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach. Each of the approaches has their own merits and demerits.The product approach emphasized on the use of language knowledge, especially in vocabulary, syntax and interface means of appropriate use. It generally consists of four steps: familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing. This approach deprives from the theory of behaviorism in psychology in terms of the development of sets of habits through the process of stimulus and responses. In this approach, teachers provide a clear, accurate and concrete form of text for students'limitation. It stresses the learner'writing development is mainly the result of imitation of model texts, and that learners need linguistic knowledge (Badger & White, 2000). The focus of product approach is that learners are given the sufficient linguistic input and enough training of composing drafts. The focus on the product approach is the writing results. The whole writing process is a mechanical imitation. Student's interest and talents can be controlled by teachers, and it ignores the interaction of group discussion between students and teachers. Throughout the teaching process, teachers are in a dominant position, ignoring the dominant position of students'learning.The process approach stresses on the process of teaching students in writing by a variety of classroom activities. The process approach to teaching writing emphasizes the writer as an independent producer of texts in order that teachers allow more time and opportunities to develop students'abilities to plan, define a rhetorical problem, and propose and evaluate the solutions. Response is crucial in assisting learners to move through the stages of the writing process and various means of providing feedback are used, including teacher-student conferences, peer responses, audio taped feedback and reformulation (Hyland,2003). This method can be active the classroom atmosphere and also make the class lively and interesting, but lack of sentence structure and content of the writing analysis.The genre approach is on the basis of genre and theory about the genre analysis. It is based on discourse analysis, applying the genre and genre analysis theory in the classroom teaching consciously. During the course of genre approach, teachers start the teaching activities by the structure of discourse. The purpose is to guide students to master the different genres of discourse which has different practical purpose and structure. Through understanding the process of constructing discourse, students master a particular genre of discourse and writing ability. While as Badger and White (2000) point out, the negative aspect of genre approaches is that they undervalue skills needed to produce a text and see learners as largely passive.After having analyzing the problems in writing teaching, the author demonstrates the merits and demerits of the three approaches: the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach. After that the process-genre approach which combined the process approach and the genre approach was proposed by Badger&White and the author was about to adopt it in the writing teaching for study. Meanwhile, the author analyzes the principle of the process-genre approach: writing is a kind of communicative activity. It is limited by a specific society context and is a reflection of a particular purpose. In this approach, writing is viewed as involving knowledge about language (as in genre and product approaches), knowledge of the context in which writing happens and especially the purpose for the writing (as in genre approach), and skills in using language (as in process approach). Students learn both genre structure and linguistic style in the article by imitating and analyzing the mode text consciously. The three potentials can be obtained from this approach, which is the teacher, the students and the target genre. Teachers are trying to stimulate students'interest and set up their confidence in writing.This approach emphasizes students'imitation consciously and analysis of model text as well as summarizes the genre structure and language features of discourse. It will provide a new perspective and ideas by applying the knowledge in practice. In writing process, students learn not only language knowledge but also writing skills. Students and teachers get the knowledge and skills from the model text. During the teaching process, teachers and model text have guiding function and students tend to involved in the writing process actively.In Chapter Three, the author demonstrates the research questions, research subjects,research instruments and experimental procedure. The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness and feasibility of the process-genre approach in the writing instruction and follow this new integrated approach so as to promote student's writing ability and skill. The research is to answer the following research questions:①In which aspects can the process-genre approach improve the students'writing ability?②What effect will the process-genre approach have on students'attitude towards writing?The experiment lasted a term (16weeks), which was the second semester of academic year 2010-2011. Experimental subjects were students majored in marketing from Higher Vocational Institute of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University. Before the experiment, students were divided into two research groups, one was the experimental group (EG) (n=28), the other was the control group (CG) (n=29). Except the different writing teaching approach, the two groups were under the same condition. The students from the EG and CG were arranged to write a composition in 30 minutes, then the compositions were scored by the teachers according to the principle of CET-4 scoring writing. During the experiment, each of the groups was applied respective research approach, the EG was adopted the process-genre approach in the English writing instruction and the CG was adopted the traditional product approach. In the course of the experiment,in order to apply the process-genre approach flexibly in the writing teaching, the three steps were operated: the pre-writing, during the writing and the post-writing. At first, in the pre-writing, the writing tasks have been assigned before class so as to collect the information about the topic and then teacher select a generic article as model text to analyze the social context and communicative purposes of this genre as well as the structure and linguistic characteristics of the article. During the writing, the steps must be followed: braining, imitate, draft or creative writing, exchange drafts, revising and getting feedback, second drafting and presentation. In the process of imitating the article, students understood the generic characteristics and structures fully and formed a framework as the schema knowledge. Finally, in the post-writing, after reciting the model text, the article needed to be rewritten. Software SPSS was adopted to make the statistics and analysis in order to investigate what the differences in writing performance between two group of students and see if any occurred after the semester's treatment by adopting different approaches in writing teaching based on the data collected before and after the experiment.Meanwhile, in Chapter four, we obtained the data from the examination before the experiment and after the experiment. Compared to the data deprived from the examination results, it helped us verify the hypothesis. By analyzing the data, the research finds:1)The students'competence in content, language and generic structure has improved greatly, especially in the aspects of vocabulary use, grammar use and sentence structures use.2)The feasibility and effectiveness of the process-genre approach have been verified. Students from the EG were feeling more confidence in writing than before. This approach raises their interest and excitement in writing. They are fond of this new approach in the writing instruction. Moreover, students'attitudes and beliefs to writing have changed greatly.In Chapter five, based on the analysis of the data, a positive conclusion can be verified that students from the EG have made great progress on writing proficiency with the help of the process-genre approach. The five steps of the process-genre approach in practical writing teaching (1) Analysis of model text, (2) Imitating, (3) Creating writing, (4) Revising and getting feedback, (5) Second or final drafting are very helpful to the vocational college students in writing. After applying the process-genre approach in writing teaching, students'writing performance and their interest have more grown dramatically. What's more, it can enhance confidence and sense of cooperation and improve the independent thinking and problem-solving skills. That's extremely important for higher vocational college students to improve English writing skills and abilities.All in all, we make some great improvements on writing instruction by the application of the process-genre approach, but it still has some limitations and deficiency. As you see, the experimental results and practical strategies have a perfect effect and reference in teaching. Meanwhile I am fully aware that teachers and students have their function in teaching and learning environment. I hope that teachers apply the approach in the English writing instruction and make a further study on it. |
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