The Application Of Process-Genre Approach In Improving English Writing Ability Of First Grade Students In Senior Middle School

Writing is an important language skill, which indicates the capability of linguisticexpression and intercultural communication. As the development and progress of thenew era, there are greater demands on modern talents and the New English Curriculumalso puts forward new requirements to students’ writing ability. It is clearly pointed outby the New English Curriculum that “we should further develop students’comprehensive language ability, especially their ability of using English to acquireinformation, process information, and analyze and solve problems. And we should alsomake special efforts to help them improve their ability of thinking and expressing inEnglish.” However, the traditional English teaching neglects to cultivate students’writing ability and the stereotypical teaching methds can not effectively improvestudents’ proficiency in English writing. Therefore, how to find an effective teachingmethod becomes a difficult task for every English teacher. After a careful study ondomestic and foreign literatures about the instruction of English writing, the authorconsiders applying process-genre approach to the teaching of English writing in seniormiddle school so as to discuss and explore whether process-genre approach caneffectively improve students’ writing ability and proficiency. Before doing teachingexperiment, the author does a survey and a writing test among the students in her class.The author analyzes the specific problems on students’ English writing and teachers’teaching work in terms of five aspects, which are the text pattern, the content, thecoherence, the appropriation of language, the lexical and the grammar. They are alsothe focus of the English test of Chinese College Entrance Examination. On the basis ofachievements made by the previous researchers in combine with the real conditions ofstudents, the author makes some improvements and innovations to the basic model ofprocess-genre approach and puts forward a new model. The new model includes foursteps, namely, genre analysis, writing skills practice, independent writing, revision andevaluation. It emphasizes cultivating students’ ability of analyzing and solvingproblems so as to help students construct their writing ability. The author uses process- genre approach to teach students to write compositions of three genres. They are aletter of advice, an E-mail of encouragement and a report of a survey containing data.After each experiment, the author collects and analyzes the experimental data of fiveaspects, namely, the text pattern, the content, the coherence, the appropriation oflanguage, the lexical and the grammar. The author finds out that, after being taught byprocess-genre approach, students show obvious evidence of progress on the fiveaspects of writing and their overall writing ability is also improved. Accordingly, theauthor believes that process-genre approach can help students promote their writingability, form good writing habits and foster their interest.