A Study On The Application Of Process-genre Approach In EAL Writing Among VCE Students

In recent years, the demand for international education has been increasing and international high schools seem to have mushroomed with more being introduced into China. Taking advantage of the most advanced education system worldwide, this new mode integrates high school education of Australia into that of China and cracks an opportunity for deepening the reform of China’s high school education system. This has laid a solid foundation for those students who are about to enter universities in Australia and other British Commonwealth countries. Besides IB, AP and other traditional courses, VCE (Victorian Certificate Education), one of the most time-honored Australian courses, has become welcomed by more schools in China.For a long time, under the influence of exam-oriented education, students lack the motivation and interest in English writing, resulting in their barely satisfactory English writing ability and their struggling EAL writing skills. These deficiencies include low performance in diction, cohesion, structure and control of genre. Based on the assessing criteria of VCE EAL writing, this paper explores the application of process genre approach in EAL writing and attempts to answer the following questions:1. How can the quality of students’ EAL writing in terms of language, structure and ideas be improved, so that the words and sentences will be accurate and sophisticated, the structure reasonable, and the content logical and complete?2. How can the students’ ability to control the genre of EAL writing be strengthened, so that they can effectively organize the structure and choose appropriate discourse in response to different types of writing tasks?3. How can the students’ initiative in EAL learning be mobilized, and their motivation and confidence in writing enhanced?In this study, the process genre approach is applied to the EAL writing class, and an experimental study is carried out on a class of grade 12 in a foreign language school in Nanjing. This group of the students are determined to give up the national college entrance examination in China, hoping to apply for Australian universities or other English speaking countries with the aid of VCE score—EAL score is the key consideration. By means of questionnaire, interview, pre-test, post test, statistics collecting and analyzing, the author achieved the following findings after the seven-month study: the process genre writing approach can change the traditional way of teaching and fit the features of EAL writing; process genre writing approach can stimulate students’ interest in EAL writing, improve students’ writing ability; process genre writing approach is truly "student-centered", emphasizing not only the interaction between students, but also the interaction between teachers and students.Even though the study has achieved some findings and implications, in no case shall the study come to an end. Questions like what is the best way for Chinese students to learn EAL subject, how to apply its educational concept to the traditional way of teaching English in China in a practical manner,and,above all,how to "take the essence and discard the dregs" in the process of assimilation, remain to be studied and answered.