A Study Of The Application Of Process Genre Approach To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

In English teaching, limited by the exam-oriented education, the training on students’ writing skill is often neglected by teachers. In this situation, English writing becomes the weakest link in junior high school English teaching. However, it is a fact that writing is a kind of important technique to realize communicative purpose of learning a language from the perspective of communicative language teaching. Thus it is necessary to provide an effective method in English writing teaching.There are three popular teaching methods in English writing: the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach. Badger and White(2000) have put forward the process genre approach seeking to combine the traditional methods, and give full play to their respective advantages of the three. The implementation mode of the process genre approach can be divided into three stages including information input before writing, information output while writing and reflection after writing. The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether the process genre approach is feasible to English writing in junior high school. Two specific research hypotheses are proposed as following:1. The process genre approach is more efficient to build up active attitudes, cultivate students’ good habits of writing, and optimize the writing ways.2. The process genre approach is more significant to improve students’ writing score than traditional product approach.There are 80 participants who come from Beiguan Junior High School of Heishan. The time devoted to the experiment is 13 weeks. The controlled class is exposed to the traditional teaching method while the process genre approach is implemented in the experimental class. The collected data of the questionnaires and tests are analyzed by Excel and SPSS. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the changes in the students’ attitudes and other details of the writing, seven students in the experimental class are interviewed at the end of the experiment. By applying the process genre approach, students have active attitudes, and good habits of writing after the experiment. In addition, analysis of the results of the pre-test and post-test shows that process genre approach is more advantageous to improve the students’ writing ability than product approach. Therefore, the research draws the conclusion that the application of the process genre approach to English writing in junior high school is both feasible and beneficial.