The Application Of Genre-based Approach In English Letter Writing Of Senior High School Students

Genre can be defined as a staged,goal-oriented and social process from Systemic Functional Linguistics.Genre adopts various patterns of vocabulary,grammar,sentence structures and discourse organization to achieve its specific purpose,hence the master of genre relies on the master of linguistic features and discourse features.From Systemic Functional Linguistic(SFL)perspective,language is regarded as a social semiotic system and language meaning depends on social context.SFL genre-based approach holds that writing can be viewed as a social activity.So the application of teaching-cycle of genre-based approach into language writing contributes learners to master main linguistic characters,social purposes and discourse structures of different genres.So the advantage of this approach lies in leading learners to know how to effectively use appropriate language to communicate and transmit valid information in various contexts.This study aimed to explore the effect of SFL genre-based approach on improving writing ability and genre awareness of letter writing.More precisely,this study applied SFL genre-based approach into instructing letter writing for senior high students.Since letter writing is frequently used to test students' writing ability in the college entrance examination,it is necessary to improve students' ability to writing various types of letter.132 students from grade 2 in senior high school who were divided into the Experimental Group(n=65)and the Control Group(n=67)participated in this experiment.The study lasted 10 weeks,and it included two writing tests for EG and CG,a post-questionnaire aiming to investigate students' genre awareness in EG and an interview for 6 students in EG.EG was taught to get access to eight types of letter by the genre-based approach(Feez,1998),which consists of 5 steps including Developing the context,Modeling and deconstructing the text,Joint construction,Linking related texts and Independent construction of the text.CG was taught by traditional 3P approach(Presentation,Practice and Production).The pre-test and post-test were graded by two teachers based on English composition scoring standards for college entrance examination.Genre awareness was measured by post-questionnaire and interviews for EG.The result of post-test shows SFL genre-based approach has better effect onimproving students' writing ability than traditional 3P approach,for EG outperformed CG in letter writing(P<.05).Although two groups have got improvement to different extent,students in EG have better performance on Content,Organization and Coherence than CG in the post-test.And the result of post-questionnaire and interview indicates students in EG have got better improvement on genre awareness.More precisely,students in EG have better recognition of writing purpose,audience awareness,and the improvement is reflected on the use of appropriate language and correct grammar and the familiarity of letter structure,what's more,genre-based approach is also helpful for students to enlarge vocabulary load.The implication of this study for language teaching and learning can be explained from the following points.Firstly,the writing teaching should pay more attention on interpreting text from both meaning and function aspects,instructing students to take context and audience into accounts to construct text authentically.Secondly,the feasibility of SFL genre-based approach indicates it can not only be used to teach advanced learners,but also intermediate learners,such as middle and senior high school students.Thirdly,the combination of language input tasks and language output tasks in SFL genre-based teaching indicates SFL genre-based may also have the effect on reading-writing class and listening-speaking class.