Effects Of Genre-based Teaching On English Writing Of High School Students

Language competence is one of the key competencies that put forward by the newly issued National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017),in which writing is one of the most important skills.Literature review reveals that a variety of problems occurs in student's writings,such as lack of lexical variety,syntactic complexity and coherence in discourse in contrast to the single teaching method adopted in high school classrooms.As a result,an urgent concern is focused on how to adopt innovative methods and how to improve students' writing abilities in writing instruction.SLA researches on writing reveal that the genre-based approach is an innovative method which can effectively foster students' writing abilities.However,majority of studies focus on ESP and advanced learners while less attention is paid to the teaching of English writing in high schools.Therefore,the study aims to explore the effects of the genre-based teaching on English writing of high school students so as to provide some enlightenment for English writing teaching in high schools.Subjects are selected from two intact parallel classes(n=44+45)from a high school in N city.One is the experimental group(n=24 male+20 female)and the other is the control group(n=23 male+22 female).Genre-based writing course is given once a week in the experimental group,involving argumentative,narrative and practical genres,each repeated four times.The students' writings are evaluated by two researchers,and the data is analyzed with SPSS 20.0.The variety of lexical diversity,syntactic complexity,and discourse cohesion are analyzed with Coh-Metrix 3.0.Questionnaire and interview which involve three dimensions are conducted to explore students' evaluation on the genre-based teaching.The study aims to answer the following research questions:(1)What are the effects of the genre-based teaching on students' English writing achievements in high schools?(2)What are the effects of the genre-based teaching on lexical diversity,syntactic complexity,and discourse cohesion of students' writings?(3)What is the evaluation of students in high schools on the genre-based teaching?The results indicated that:(1)There is a significant difference in students' writings between the experimental and control groups(p<.05),and students from the experimental group have a better performance.(2)In terms of lexical diversity,syntactical complexity and discourse cohesion,there exist some significance between the experimental and control groups,and genre-based teaching can help to improve students' writing from the three aspects.As for the four indicators related to lexical diversity,LDTTRa,LDMTLD and LDVOCD exist significant differences(p<.05)while LDTTRc is not significant(p>.05).In terms of seven indicators related to syntactic complexity: SYNLE,SYNNP,SYNMEDpos,SYNMEDwrd,SYNMEDlem,SYNSTRUTa and SYNSTRUTt,results indicate that all of the seven indicators are significant(p<.05).In discourse cohesion,among the related seven indicators,CRFAO1,CRFAOa,LSASS1,LSASSp and LSASSpd exist significant differences(p<.05)while CRFSO1 and CRFSOa are not significant(p>.05).(3)The results of questionnaire and interview show that 80% of the students hold positive attitudes to the genre-based teaching and all positive answers are given to the questions related to reader awareness,text structures and language performance in the questionnaire and interview.The study provides the following implications to the teaching of English writing in high schools:(1)There exists a positive correlation between the genre-based teaching and students' writings,which displays the effectiveness of the genre-based teaching.Thus,it is desirable to adopt the genre-based teaching in high schools to promote students' writings.(2)Genre-based teaching has positive effects on developing students' lexical diversity,syntactic structure,and discourse cohesion.Therefore,the genre-based teaching can be applied in high schools to improve students' lexical diversity,syntactic complexity and discourse cohesion(3)The results of questionnaire and interview reveal that students show willingness and adaption in genre-based teaching.By implementing the genre-based teaching,their awareness in the audience,text structure,and language proficiency will be greatly fostered.