The Cultivation Of Writing Competence For Non-English Majors In China

Writing instruction and learning is a very important part of college English teaching practice. Both English teachers and learners devote themselves to achievement of the competence in writing, for they are well aware of its significance in English learning. However, the studies have shown that the current situation about English writing competence for non-English majors in college in China is far from satisfactory. Moreover, statistics from CET4 and CET6 have clearly indicated that English writing part has always been the most difficult part among English skills.Based on the above situation, this paper emphasizes the need to cultivate writing competence for non-English majors in Chinese college, and tries to probe into the possible shift from the product approach to the process approach in teaching college English writing to non-English majors by collecting, analyzing and researching related data about their writing activities. The author designs an experiment and the questionnaire to verify the three hypotheses in the paper:1) whether the process approach and the product approach are helpful to improve English writing competence for non-English majors in college; 2) whether the process approach has a better effect on the build-up of students’ confidence and interest in English writing compared with the product approach; 3) whether the process approach is more effective than the product approach in developing students’ English writing competence. In the experiment,90 non-English majors at a similar level of English writing are selected to be the subjects and are divided into two groups to take a test at the beginning of the experiment to evaluate their writing competence. Then in the course of the experiment, several writing tasks are assigned. At the end of the experiment, a posttest is given to both groups to detect the change as precisely as possible. Two interviews are arranged between the researcher and students selected at random from the experimental group. At the same time, two questionnaires are designed and handed out at the beginning and end of the study, and the results are collected and analyzed with the purpose of examining the changes in the subjects concerning their attitude towards English writing and teaching method, namely, the process approach.Attention is to be focused mainly on the the product writing approach, the process writing approach, and comparison between them. After the analysis of the related statistics, the further research suggestions are offered for conducting effective English writing teaching and enhancing the writing competence for Chinese non-English majors in college. From the results and analysis of the study, the merits of the process approach in writing instruction are significant, compared with the traditional product approach. Therefore, the study of a focus shift from the traditional product approach to the process approach is definitely necessary for the present writing teaching.