Exploring Genre Awareness In EGAP Writing Class

Owing to the economic, social and academic needs as well as the advantages of EGAP (General Academic Purpose in Chinese College English) itself, there exist a great deal of necessity and feasibility for applying English for EGAP class. It is our understanding that writing plays an extremely important role in the course of EGAP and genre is a quite influential factor in improving students’ writing competency. However, the investigation of students’ current writing situation shows that being deeply influenced by traditional writing teaching methods which emphasize grammar and vocabulary; the students have little knowledge about genre approach theoretically or systematically and lack the awareness of genre. Because of this, it becomes necessary to put forward an English writing teaching approach which is effective as well as applicable to the situation in China so as to enhance their writing competence.This paper firstly gives a brief introduction to the developing trend of EGAP by discussing its necessity and applicability in China and the main views of two schools of genre theory, the theoretical foundation and genre-based approaches of three main schools of genre study and practice. And also, their characteristics are compared and the adaptability in Chinese College EGAP class is analyzed, based on which it puts forward a modified Genre-based approach in EGAP writing class in order to enhance students’genre awareness and improve their writing skills.To achieve this, two non-English major classes of freshmen in East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) have been selected as the experimental class and controlled class, and the research lasts one semester. The Genre-based approach is applied in the experimental class following a modified Genre-based approach. And a comparison has been made on the same subject at the beginning and the end of the semester and the comparison and contrast between the experimental class and controlled class have also been made. Owing to various factors, such as learning motivation, different students show varied extent of acceptance to certain teaching approaches. Therefore, emphasis has not only been put on the overall changes, but also on the individual differences.There are three hypotheses:1. Can Genre-based approach enhance students’ genre awareness?2. Can "genre awareness" really improve students’ writing ability in EGAP? If the students can get overall improvement, is there any difference in gender and the students with diverse learning aptitudes because of the individual difference? If some students fail to improve, what’s the possible reason behind it?3. Will Chinese students accept and adapt to Genre-based Approach?Three sets of data from six writing assignments, writing in final-term examination and questionnaires are collected and analyzed with the help of the software SPSS19.0. And the study indicates that:(1) Genre-based approach has a significant effect in sensitizing students’ genre awareness, improving holistic writing competence;(2) during the whole experimental process, girls have a stable superiority over boys, however, boys’improvement fluctuation is comparatively obvious;(3) students of medium efficiency have the greatest potential to make big improvement;(4) Unavoidably, in this research there are some students who fail to gain improvement in terms of writing ability or get changed in terms of writing notions, and through analysis it has been found that the main objective reasons are:the difficulty of writing itself, the differences of culture and ways of thinking between east and west, the limited teaching period, etc.; and subjective reasons mainly come from:the limited competence of students themselves, the lack of interest in English writing, etc..(5) a overwhelming majority of students are liable to accept this approach and able to adapt to it pretty well, yet acceptation is not absolutely accompanied by adaptation;(6) feedback is a dispensable part in English writing teaching, and more specific feedback will bring stronger motivation in students’ self-correcting and developing;In the end, the author presents some limitations in her research and hopes that this can give some hints and tips to further research in EFL writing classes.