A Study Of The Effects Of Process Genre Approach On Junior High School Students' English Writing Performance And Writing Anxiety

As one of the four fundamental English skills,writing is a significant way for learners to express their ideas and communicate with others in written form.Meanwhile,as an output skill,writing is a vital instrument to measure students',ability to use language,organize language,express as well as writing ability,which plays an irreplaceable role in English teaching.However,the current situation of English writing teaching in junior high school is unsatisfactory.Moreover,writing is a complex psychological process affected by learners' emotion.Many junior students often appear the phenomenon of avoidance and fear of writing.Therefore,it is imperative to apply an effective approach to improve the present situation of junior English writing teaching.As a comprehensive teaching method,process genre approach was proposed by Badger and White in 2000,which is a student-centered method and pays attention to the writing process and it focuses on the input of the language knowledge,discourse knowledge,sentence structure,genre knowledge,writing purpose and writing skills.Thus,the present study implements process genre approach to junior English writing teaching,and attempts to investigate whether process genre approach can improve students' writing performance and alleviate students,wr:iting anxiety.So,this thesis puts forward the following research questions:1.What are the effects of process genre approach on junior students'English writing performance?2.What are the effects of process genre approach on junior students' English writing anxiety?A 16-week experiment was conducted among 89 students from two classes of grade two of the junior high school where the author interned(47 boys and 42 girls,mean age=13.5 years),encompassing tests,inventory and interview.From March to June in 2018,the experimental class was instructed by process genre approach,while the control class still adopted the traditional writing teaching method.At the end of the experiment,two classes were tested and SPSS 17.0 was used to analyze the collected data.Through a 16-week teaching experiment,the author obtained the following findings:1.Process genre approach has a positive effect on students'English writing performance and it is also extremely helpful in improving students'writing proficiency in terms of content,organization and language.2.Process genre approach can effectively alleviate students'anxiety in English writing,of which somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety are most significant,but it has little obvious effects on avoidance behavior.This study has investigated that process genre approach can improve junior high school students' English writing proficiency and reduce their English writing anxiety.Moreover,it contributes to students'positive attitude towards writing,good habits of writing and awareness of genre as well as students'efficient interaction in class,enhancing students' learning autonomy.In addition,this study also provides some empirical data for the relevant research,and tries to put forward some feasible suggestions for junior hisgh school English writing teaching.Whereas,there are still some limitations in this study,which need to be further improved in the future.