An Empirical Study On The Effects Of The Process-Genre Approach On English Writing Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

Writing is a complex psychological process and will be influenced by affective factors.And some phenomena of English writing anxiety are often observed among senior high school students,such as avoidance behavior and fear of English writing.According to Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis,it will promote students' second language acquisition when learners' motivation is strong,attitude is positive,confidence is high and anxiety is low.The Process-Genre Approach,put forward by Richard Badger and Goodith White,is a balanced writing teaching approach based on the Product Approach,the Process Approach and the Genre Approach.It selects the essence and discards the dross.The related studies show that the Process-Genre Approach can effectively improve learners' writing ability,raise their interests and enhance confidence in writing.But there are few studies working on the effects of the Process-Genre Approach on high school students' English writing anxiety.This study applies the Process-Genre Approach to high school English writing teaching practice and aims to discuss these two research questions:(1)What is the present situation of high school students' English writing anxiety?(2)What are the effects of the Process-Genre Approach on high school students' English writing anxiety?This study selects two parallel classes,with 130 students in total,from Grade Two in a senior high school in Handan,Hebei Province as the participants.Before the experiment,the pre-tests of English writing anxiety and English writing test verify that there is no significant difference between the two classes.The study uses the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory(SLWAI),designed by Cheng(2004),to measure the degrees of participants' English writing anxiety.In the Factor Analysis of the pre-test questionnaires data,there are four subscales of English writing anxiety being analyzed:Avoidance Behavior Anxiety(ABA),Test Anxiety(TA),Somatic Anxiety(SA)and Confidence Anxiety(CA).These two classes are randomly appointed as the experiment class and the control class.The Process-Genre Approach is used in the experiment class and the traditional writing teaching method is used in the control class.The teaching experiment lasts 8 weeks.After the experiment,the post-tests of the questionnaire survey and the English writing test are conducted and the results are collected and analyzed in SPSS 21.0.As is shown in the results,(1)the general situation of English writing anxiety of the participants ranged from a medium to high level,with the four subscales analyzed in the Factor Analysis,the Avoidance Behavior Anxiety(ABA)being significant at a high level.The Test Anxiety(TA),the Somatic Anxiety(SA)and the Confidence Anxiety(CA)are at the medium level;(2)The Process-Genre Approach significantly decreased high school students' English writing anxiety,especially the Avoidance Behavior Anxiety(ABA)and the Confidence Anxiety(CA).This study puts the Process-Genre Approach into high school English writing teaching practice.And this study provides the evidence that the approach can reduce high school students' English writing anxiety.This study also provides some empirical data to related studies and gives some teaching suggestions to the front-line teaching.For some objective reasons,it is inevitable that this study needs to be developed in future teaching practice.