A Study Of Correlation Between Senior High School Students’Genre Knowledge For English Letter Writing And Their English Writing Proficiency

English writing is a learning activity in which learners use language in the process of learning English,which requires learners to use language to “do things”based on observing and recognizing the world.Genre knowledge theory is communicative-purpose-centered,which emphasizes that writing need to achieve communicative purpose with comprehensible language forms on the basis of analyzing writing topics and contexts.Letter writing is the main writing genre in senior high schools.And at present,the writing part in National Matriculation English Test(NMET)is to examine the senior high school students’ letter writing,which is focused on the students’ content points,the frequency and accuracy of using vocabularies and grammatical structures,the coherence of context,and the degree of completion of communicative purposes in their letter writing.The present study,guided by the theoretical framework of genre knowledge constructed by Hyland(2004),intends to explore into the correlation between senior high school students’ genre knowledge and their writing proficiency.Specifically,three research questions are to be answered in the study,which are listed as follows:1)What is the general situation of senior high school students’ genre knowledge for English letter writing?2)What is the correlation between senior high school students’ genre knowledge for English letter writing and their writing proficiency?3)What are the important predictors of genre knowledge that influence senior high school students’ writing proficiency?After analyzing the data from the questionnaire and the students’ compositions both quantitatively and qualitatively,the results are found as follows:1)Generally speaking,the mean value of genre knowledge for English letter writing is 3.1,which means the students are unfamiliar with genre knowledge for English letter writing.Specifically speaking,the mean value of the four dimensions in genre knowledge—communicative purpose knowledge,text convention knowledge,content and register knowledge,and context knowledge—are respectively 3.3,3.2,2.9,and 3.1.After analyzing the mean value of the fourteen questions in the questionnaire,it is found that the students’ understanding of genre knowledge for English letter writing stays in a superficial stage,which is manifested in four aspects.Firstly,the students think that communication only needs to complete a certain specific act,such as apology or request,which resulted in ignoring the writing purpose hidden behind the specific acts.Secondly,the students’ grammar learning only are focused on the correctness of grammar,ignoring the significance of grammatical structures to express meanings.Thirdly,the students lack enough and systematic topic background knowledge to analyze writing tasks,let alone describe the topic background knowledge logically.Fourthly,although the students do have cultural awareness and audience awareness,they only take the teachers as their only audience.2)There is a significant correlation relationship between senior high school students’ genre knowledge and their writing proficiency(r=0.4,p=0.00).The correlation value of each dimension of genre knowledge,which are communicative purpose knowledge(r=0.32,p=0.00),text convention knowledge(r=0.37,p=0.00),content and register knowledge(r=0.36,p=0.00),and context knowledge(r=0.30,p=0.00),have moderate correlation relationship with writing proficiency.By comparison,the text convention knowledge and content and register knowledge are more correlated with the students’ writing proficiency.3)The text convention knowledge and content and the register knowledge are two significant predictors that influence the students’ writing proficiency.Text convention knowledge and content and register knowledge enters 16.7% and 2.9%,respectively,which contributes a total of 16.7% to the students’ writing proficiency.It can be seen that the topic and content knowledge and text convention knowledge are not only the important factors which affect senior high school students’ English writing proficiency,but also they essentially embody the ways to cultivate the students to analyze and solve problems in English,and to improve the students’ key competency.