The Application Of The Process-genre Approach To Writing Teaching In Senior High School

As a vital means of communication, English is playing an increasingly important role in our daily life. For communication, writing is a significant activity, which assists people to express thoughts and ideas. In the teaching of writing the most difficult problem students are faced with is how to write in English instead of what to write. Teachers, therefore, are advised to give special attention to improving the quality of students’writing.The thesis presents the present situation of writing teaching in senior high school and the requirements for writing in the New English Curriculum Standard. Besides, the advantages and disadvantages of the product approach, the process approach and the genre approach are discussed separately. Then, on the basis of constructivism theory and genre analysis theory, the author analyzes the essential ideas and the advantages of the process-genre approach. What the author holds is that the application of the process-genre approach to English writing teaching in senior high school can arouse students’interests in writing, which will eventually help improve students’ writing competence.After reading and researching related literature both at home and abroad, the author applies the process-genre approach to the teaching of writing based on her own teaching practice. The stages the author puts forwards are as follows:(1) Pre-writing:text reading, genre constructing;(2) While writing:independent drafting, peer feedback, draft revising;(3) Post-writing:teacher evaluating.In order to testify the hypotheses that not only can the process-genre approach raise students’confidence and arouse their interests in writing, but also improve their writing competence effectively, an experiment was conducted in two science classes in Tianjin No.51Middle School from September2012to January2013. During the20-week experiment, one science class is chosen as the experimental class, the other is the control class. In the experiment, the experimental class adopted the process-genre approach based on the texts in the textbooks in writing classes, while the control class was still taught by the traditional product approach. The students of both classes took a pre-test and a post-test, which were to examine their writing proficiency. In addition, the students in both classes also took two questionnaires with the same contents and some of the students in the experimental class were chosen to take part in an interview. The data was collected and analyzed by the software SPSS17.0.The result of the experiment shows that the process-genre approach is effective in improving students’ writing competence and helping them build up confidence and inspire their interests in English writing.