A Study Of The Application Of Rocess-genre Approach To English Writing Teaching In Junior Middle Schools

As is known, writing plays a quite important role in teaching and learning English. How toimprove the teaching of English writing has always been a hot topic for the teachers and expertsin second language acquisition research field. In recent years, Series of approaches and theorieshave been discussed, such as product approach, process-based approach, genre approach etc. In2000, two researchers, R. Badger&G. White, put forward a comprehensive pattern－process-genre approach (hereafter PGA). PGA now has attracted the eyes of many teachers andspecialists and has been made use of in language teaching and affected language use andteaching in some places of the world. In China, PGA has been usually studied in the seniormiddle schools or colleges.At the same time, Junior English for China, Student Textbooks (published by PeopleEducation Press), mainly belong to three genres: narration，expository writing，practical writingand now the test for senior high school also has the requirement about students’ writing ability.According to the experiences of English teaching in junior schools, the author has realized thatthere are some useful materials to improve the students’ writing ability by using PGA. All thesemade it possible and necessary for teachers to adopt PGA in English writing teaching in theclassroom.Therefore, the author first made a literature review of the writing theories: ProductApproach, Process Approach, Genre Approach and Process-genre Approach, and thenconducted the experiment on PGA. The whole experiment is carried out among the108students of the two junior middle school classes in Shungeng Middle School of Jinan,Shandong, in one term. The study attempts to solve the following two questions:1. Whether PGA can be used and produces good effects on the students’ performance inwriting in junior schools or not?2. Is process-genre approach more effective than product approach in improving thestudents’ writing ability?The experiment is composed of four parts, which include two tests, the teaching experiment,two questionnaires, a teaching modeling plan and an interview. The two tests include a pre-test and a post-test. The pre-test was used to guarantee the same English writing proficiency of thetwo classes before the experiment. The post-test was used to test whether there was a change ofwriting proficiency between the experimental class and the control class. In the experiment, thestudents in experimental class were taught in the process-genre approach while the students incontrol class were taught in the product approach. It was the same teacher who taught both theexperimental class and the control class.The author contrasts the practical effectiveness of process-genre approach and productapproach in improving junior student English writing proficiency through experimentalresearch. The result shows that process-genre approach contributes more to the improvement ofEnglish writing proficiency than product approach. Process-genre approach is indeed moreeffective than product approach in improving junior students’ abilities. The process-genreapproach also can raise the students writing interest, confidence and strategies.In order to verify whether the process-genre approach is more effective than productapproach in English writing teaching, the author conducts two questionnaire research as well asan interview. The results of the two questionnaires and interviews validated and supplementedthe experimental results. The teaching case explained the procedure of this approach in thestudy. At the same time the author has obtained some new findings in the research. There aremany teaching materials suitable for process-genre approach to English writing teaching in thecurrent junior middle school. And because of the short refining materials, it solves the formerlyexisting problems in the previous experiments in high school and universities. In the previousexperiments there is not enough class time. The author couldn’t finish all steps of process-genreapproach. So they had to put the feedback link after class. In addition, because the materials inthe textbook relates closely to the student’s actual life, and the junior middle schoolstudents(from Grade Two) don’t have much pressure of the high school entrance exam, thestudents keep high enthusiasm and actively participate in the experiment. The teachers andstudents all gain a lot in the study.Although the author is satisfied with the whole results of the research, there are still somelimitations. It is only one semester for this experiment. There are inevitably subjective factors inthe teachers’ evaluation. In the end, the author also gave some pedagogical implications. Thesignificance of this research lies in that the process-genre approach applied to the English writing teaching in junior middle schools is the supplements to the current domestic andinternational researches on process-genre approach.