| As one of the significant means of communication, writing in English has been widely used in many fields. However, writing is a complex activity and probably the most difficult of all the macro-skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing. Therefore, it is very necessary to study writing instruction so that teachers can help learners to master the skills.In China, the survey based on the registered scores of each part of CET-4 reveals that writing has always been the weakest part of college students' English competence. Therefore, the necessity of seeking the insights and potential solutions to the problems in language teaching, and pursuing an effective teaching approach has been realized gradually.There are three popular approaches of teaching writing: the product approach, the process approaches, and the genre approach. Each of them has its own merits and demerits.Product approach derives from the theory of behaviorism in psychology which holds that the teaching of writing is achieved in terms of the development of sets of habits through process of stimulus and responses (Nunan, 2001). In this approach, teachers provide a clear, accurate and concrete form of text for students' imitation. It stresses the learners' writing development is mainly the result of imitation of model texts, and that learners need linguistic knowledge (Badger, 2002). The most important advantage of this approach is that students are given sufficient language input and adequate training of composing crafts. It recognizes that students need linguistic knowledge on the target language. While it views writing as a product, not a process, and overemphasizes on samples and linguistic knowledge. The process approach to teaching writing emphasizes the writer as an independent producer of texts so that teachers allow their students' time and opportunity to develop students' abilities to plan, define a rhetorical problem, and propose and evaluate solutions. Response is crucial in assisting learners to move through the stages of the writing process, and various means of providing feedback are used, including teacher-student conferences, peer response, audio taped feedback, and reformulation (Hyland, 2003). In a process approach, the finished text emerges rather than appearing as soon as the student reaches the required word count. Nevertheless, process approaches are often criticized for failing to recognize that different types of texts serve different purposes.Genre approaches, focus more on the reader, and on the conventions that a piece of writing needs to follow in order to be successfully accepted by its readership (Muncie, 2002). Genre-based approaches begin with the whole text as the unit in focus rather than the sentence; they are concerned with the social macro-purposes of language, and not just the semantic micro-functions of individual words and sentences. While as Badger and White (2000) point out, the negative aspect of genre approaches is that they undervalue skills needed to produce a text, and see learners as largely passive.Notwithstanding the limitations of product-based, process-based and genre-based approaches, a synthesis of process genre-based approach is thought as an accommodating as well as enriched mode to teach writing. The model of the process genre approach is described in terms of a view of writing and a view of the development of writing. In this approach, writing is viewed as involving knowledge about language (as in genre and product approaches), knowledge of the context in which writing happens and especially the purpose for the writing (as in genre approaches), and skills in using language (as in process approaches). The model also describes that writing development happens by drawing out the learners' potential (as in genre approaches) and by providing input to which the learners respond (as in process approaches) (Badger and White, 2000). With process genre approach students are confronted with a situation, which in turn influences them to address the situation using a particular genre of writing. The students, with the help of their teacher and appropriate texts, must deal with the situation in the appropriate way. Process can be initiated by way of peer-to-peer interaction, teacher-to-peer interaction and from the problem associated with the situation (which advances the idea of effective and complete resolution). Genre is closely connected to the basic fabric of the situation, which should be developed in a manner that elicits the appropriate approach to the writing.When it comes to the practical research of this paper, a teaching experiment was carried out to test whether the process genre approach can improve the college students' writing proficiency. And the hypothesis of the experiment is that the process genre approach is effective in improving the students' writing proficiency. Software SPSS is adopted to make the statistics analysis in order to investigate what differences in writing performance between two group of students, to see if any occurred after a semester's treatment by adopting different approaches in writing teaching based on the data collected before and after the experiment.The experiment lasted a term (15 weeks), which is the second semester of academic year 2006-2007. Two separate classes composed of 88 non-English major sophomores of Century College, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications are chosen to participate in the experiment, one as the experimental class, the other as the control class; the students are from the same department. Except the different writing teaching approach, the two classes are under the similar condition. The whole study is divided into three phases: pre-test, writing quiz, and post-test. Before the experiment, both the 44 students from the control class and experimental class are arranged to write a composition in 30 minutes, then these compositions are scored by two teachers according to the principle of CET-4 scoring writing. During the test, the experimental class is taught writing by the process genre approach. The research questions are: Is the Process Genre Approach helpful in improving college students' writing performance? What effect will the Process Genre Approach have on students' attitude toward writing? Based on the analysis of the raw data, a positive answer to the hypothesis was revealed, that the integrated approach: the process genre approach is effective in improving the college students' writing proficiency. The five steps of the process genre approach, (1) Analysis of model text, (2) Imitating, (3) Creative writing, (4) Revising and Getting Feedback, and (5) Second or final drafting are very helpful to the college students' writing. After experiencing the process genre approach, the subjects' writing proficiency improved. The improvement can be reflected not only by the increasing marks, but also by the various aspects of the writing, including: the total number of the words, the number of T-units, the mean length of each T-unit, the token / type ratio, and the error / words ratio.Under Badger and Whites' framework, four suggestions on writing instruction are got, they are: (1) Balancing form and function, writing teachers need to help their students understand that grammatical rules and linguistic forms aid in clear understanding of meaning and are always related to its function in the discourse. Also, teachers' motivation to focus on form should come from an analysis of learner's communicative needs, rather than from an externally imposed linguistic syllabus. (2) Providing learners input from teachers, texts and other learners, teachers should facilitate the whole writing process. Model text can give learners the framework of a genre and many inspirations for their writing. Once they have something to say, they are well on their way to produce a good first draft. Other learners can provide input in the less threatening context of discussion about finding topics, organizing ideas, enriching ideas and revising techniques and so on. (3) Extending the writing curriculum, the wide range of reading resources will help students extend their ideas and knowledge, and support them to complete their final writings. In addition, by using diverse resources, students develop the additional and useful vocabulary, experience the important linguistic and semantic features of language, and have an opportunity to practice a wide range of writings. Moreover, with self-discovery in writing, students will be familiar with solving the problems by themselves, and thereby they will be able to develop autonomy. (4) Providing meaningful response and formative assessment, rather than just focusing on teacher's written feedback, writing teachers need to apply alternative forms of feedback, such as teacher-student conferencing, peer feedback, in-class grammar instruction (particularly problematic issues in writing), and maintenance of error charts or logs into class (Ferris, 2002), in writing classes, where written feedback from the teachers is the standard, using various alternative forms of feedback will help students actively participate in writing, help them gain the skills necessary to revise their own writing, and reduce teachers' workload.To sum up, progress is already being made in realizing the importance of writing instruction. But more effort is needed in the direction of convincing college English teachers of introducing process genre approach in writing class and making further study on it. |
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