Teaching PlanA General Introduction

Course Description and Objective

• Advanced English Composition is a writing intensive course that takes a holistic approach to learning writing. You will be developing your writing skills and refining your personal writing style by experimenting with different genres and writing techniques. Various writing projects will give you the opportunity to apply the writing process in a number of ways. In addition to improving your overall writing ability, this course will help you master the essay section of the TEM8 and introduce you to the basics of academic writing required for your senior research project.

After This Course, You Will Be Able To: • Move away from imitative writing and compose with your own

unique style.• Vary your sentence structure and incorporate a more

sophisticated vocabulary into your writing.• Constructively critique other writer's work as well as your own.• Develop a writing process that involves editing, revision, and

rewriting.• Write creative fiction and non-fiction.• Write a concise, poignant, well-structured 400-word essay in 35

minutes.

A General Introduction1. Curriculum Rationale

Our writing teaching is based on the theory of process-oriented approach from social cognitive psychology and the theories of genre analysis from the angle of functional linguistics and social-linguistics. The "process approach" is defined as "an approach to the teaching of writing which stresses the creativity of the individual writer, and which pays attention to the development of good writing practices rather than the imitation of models" (Tribble, 1994). According to Hasan's Generic Structural Potential (GSP) theory, “genre” is defined as a type of discourse, which is determined by the contextual variables, namely, field, tenor and mode. Discourses of the same genre will have a similar semantic structure, or they will share the same obligatory elements, the same sequence, etc (Halliday &. Hasan, 1985).

A General Introduction

2. Genre-based Discourse as a Teaching Unit

Our writing classes take different genre-based discourses as the basic teaching units. In this level, eleven kinds of genre-based discourses are covered. They arc personal letter, business letter, job application letter, resume, news report, summary and abstract, narration of an event, description of a place, description of a person, process-analysis, and argumentative essay.

A General Introduction

3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

The genre-based process approach is composed of seven teaching procedures. They are pre-writing, classroom discussion, sample commentary, guided writing, self-revision, group interaction, after class practice and teacher's evaluation. Elaborations of the seven steps are as follows:

1) Pre-writingStudents are given a proposition or a situation and are required to write the genre which they are going to learn in any way they think appropriate in class within 10 to 15 minutes. The purpose for this teaching procedure is to let the students think about the organization, the content and the developing patterns and build a knowledge gap and later they can find their strong and weak points so as to be able to close the gap by learning from the provided samples.

A General Introduction

3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

A General Introduction3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

2) Classroom DiscussionThe main purpose of this teaching procedure is to let students see that any written discourses have their own communicative purposes and that different genres have their different semantic structures and language features because of their different writing purposes. In other words, we should consider what we write as well as how we should write it. Therefore, teachers will guide the students to discuss the drafts by considering the following five questions:a) Why does the writer write this? Is the writing purpose clear?b) What is the relationship between the writer and reader?c) What semantic elements are necessary according to the writing purpose? Is the sequence of the content appropriate?d) What is the mode? Is it to be read or to be spoken in public?e) What are the language features for this genre?After the discussion, the students have to be clear: to write for a particular purpose, for a particular readers, and in what form.

A General Introduction

3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

3) Sample CommentaryIn this procedure, the teacher shows the students a few samples and asks them to analyze them again by asking the above five questions. The purpose for this teaching procedure is to make the students have a better understanding of what is good writing, what necessary semantic elements a good writing should have, and why.

A General Introduction

3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

4) Guided WritingThis is a very important procedure which will tell the students what to write as well as how to write grammatically and idiomatically. Teachers should summarize the writing principles including the writing purposes, the necessary elements, the semantic structures and the language features.

5) Self-revisionAfter commenting on the sample and the writing principles, the students should have found the problems in their draft and then revise their drafts again in class.

A General Introduction

3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

6) Group or Peer InteractionTeachers will ask the students to share their revised copies within the group so that the group members can improve them. Teachers can join in the students' group discussion. There are two purposes for this procedure. One of the purposes is to train the students' ability to edit their own writing and the other purpose is to train student's ability to interact with their peers and to evaluate their peers' work according to the guidelines.

A General Introduction3. Genre-based Process Teaching Approach

7) After-class Practice and Teacher's EvaluationStudents should finish the writing tasks and each student is required to assess the other 3 peers’ writing and this procedure will be considered in the final assessment. The teacher will randomly evaluate five students' writing assignments each time.

A General Introduction4. Books and References

•祁寿华编著，《高级英语写作指南》（第一版），上海：上海外语教育出版社， 2001。•蔡慧萍主编，《语类 -过程英语写作教程》，杭州：浙江大学出版社， 2012。•丁往道等 ,《英语写作手册》，北京：外语教学与研究出版社， 1997。•周国强，《高级英语写作教程》，上海：上海交通大学出版社， 2003。

5. Evaluation• Regular Grade 40% + Final Exams 60% • All assignments must be uploaded to the composit

ion review system at http://210.33.27.17/• All relative documents can be downloaded from

http://wl.sxjpkc.com/gjxz/index.asp

• Course Grading• 60% - Final Exam• 20% - Writing Assignments (including 5% of peer

assessment)• 10% - In-class Exercises • 10% - Group Performance

week Topics Activities and Assignments

1 Course Introduction Make-up Lyrics

2 Personal Letter Writing A letter to you in 10 years

3 Business Letter Writing A letter of complaint

4 Resume WritingJob Application Letter

Simulation of a Job Interview

5 News Report Writing Make a video of news report

6 Abstract and Summary Writing Write a summary for the given material

7 Narration Tell a story behind some picture

8 Description of a Place Describe a place

9 Description of a Person Write a condolence

10 Process Analysis Essay Make a video of “How to”

11 Argumentation Essay Debate contest

12 TEM 8 Writing 1 TEM 8 writing practice 1

13 TEM 8 Writing 2 TEM 8 writing practice 2

14 TEM 8 Writing 3 TEM 8 writing practice 3

15 TEM 8 Writing 4 TEM 8 writing practice 4

16 Final Review