The Application Study Of Genre-based Approach To English Summary Writing Teaching At Senior High Schools

Summary writing is an effective teaching and testing mean to train students’ thinking and generalization ability,which is in accordance with the requirements and trends of English writing teaching.Zhejiang Province,an experimental province of college entrance examination comprehensive reform,has used a new kind of writing task—summary writing,in the English college entrance examination writing section in 2016.Summary writing not only examines the students’ ability to obtain important information and generalize the main idea of the article,but also the students’ knowledge of the discourse structure,which fully meets the national curriculum standards.However,as far as the current situation is concerned,students are unfamiliar with this new kind of writing task and lack of understanding of the macro-structure of the article,so they face many difficulties in actual writing.At the same time,teaching summary writing also poses challenges for teachers.Therefore,how to carry on the summary writing teaching effectively has become an urgent question.This research is an applied research of genre-based approach guided by genre theory,schema theory and input-output hypothesis.Based on the previous research results and the investigation of the status quo of summary writing teaching before the experiment,the writer tries to establish a genre-based teaching mode which is suitable for English summary writing teaching at senior high schools.The model is divided into three stages: activate the student’s existing schemata and provide comprehensible input about the generic knowledge before writing;promote the formation of new schema about genre under the guidance of genre theory when writing;apply the new schema for the language output of the summary writing.The model is embodied in five steps: genre analysis,group imitation writing,assessments on the group works,independent writing,and revision and rewriting.The participants of this study are students in two classes in senior one of a key senior high school in Shandong Province.Among them,the genre-based approach is applied to the experimental class,and the traditional product approach is used for the control class.Before the teaching experiment,the writer conducts a questionnaire survey of all English teachers in this school and interviews some teachers.The results show that it is necessary and meaningful to carry out the research on the application of genre-based approach to summary writing teaching at senior high schools.The study lasts 14 weeks and the writer tries to use research instruments such as questionnaire,interview,and tests to solve the following questions:(1)What is the status quo of genre-based approach in the current high school English summary writing teaching?(2)How to apply genre-based approach to English summary writing teaching at senior high schools?(3)What is the effect of genre-based approach to the teaching of English summary writing at senior high schools?After the teaching experiment,according to the analysis of the scores of pre-test and post-test,it is found that the scores of summary writing in experimental class are significantly higher than that of the control class.This shows that the application of genre-based approach can effectively improve students’ summary writing competencies.The results of student interview show that genre-based approach can increase students’ summary writing interest and self-confidence,cultivate students’ genre awareness,help students understand the discourse structure of the article,and develop good summary writing habits.The research results prove that it is necessary and feasible to introduce genre-based approach to English summary writing at senior high schools.However,teachers should adjust the teaching steps flexibly according to the actual teaching situation of the summary writing so as to improve students’ summary writing competency.