An Exploration on Teaching Mode for English Writing for
Application-Orientation Undergraduate Universities
The Study of the Intermingling of Product Approach and Process Approachs
Zhengying Wu
English Department, Anhui Sanlian University, Hean Street, Hefei, Anhui, China
Keywords: Product Approach, Process Approach, Intermingle, Learning Style, Application-Orientation Undergraduate
Universities.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to explore a new teaching mode suitable for the teaching of English writing.
The paper analyzed Product Approach and Process Approach respectively and then learning styles of students
in application-orientation undergraduate universities in China. Finally it illustrated the concrete intermingling
of these approaches in English Writing in Anhui Sanlian University. This intermingling study provides an
effective way to carry out the reform of the practical teaching in writing course in application-orientation
undergraduate universities.
1 INTRODUCTION
Along with the rapid development of Chinese higher
education from elite education to mass education, a
group of application-orientation undergraduate
universities have emerged since 1990s, which have
reached more than two hundred, ccounting for one
third of the undergraduate universities of our country
at present (Guanzhong Lu, 2007). However, there
are lots of common problems and contradictions in
practical teaching, the core link of construction of
application-orientation undergraduate universities.
English Writing is a foundamental course of English
major, and also the key and difficulty in practical
teaching reform in application-orientation
undergraduate universities. In recent situation of
higher education, the practical teaching reform in
application- orientation undergraduate universities is
still under exploration, and the teaching contents,
link and methods are not timely updated, and
therefore it hasn’t played the role of cultivating
applied undergraduate talents of English properly.
For that reason, we start a preliminary discussion on
teaching method of English Writing here.
2 CONTRAST OF PRODUCT
APPROACH AND PROCESS
APPROACH IN ENGLISH
WRITING
Product Approach is the main western teaching
method in English Writing in 1960s. The teaching
under this approach focuses on comprehension and
analysis of literary works, from diction, sentence,
paragraph to the whole composition. It lets students
grasp the basic features and writing techniques of all
kinds of styles through analysis of literary works.
The general procedure of Product Approach is as
follows: Firstly, teachers explain certain figure of
speech. Secondly, they require students to read a
work, and discuss and analyze the work they have
read later. Finally, teachers will arrange homework
according to the writing device they have explained
and the work they have read(Gang Cui, 2006). This
approach divides the class into four steps:
familiarization——controlled writing—— guided
writing——free writing.
Process Approach derived from native
language teaching in 1960s, and 20 years later it was
introduced into second language teaching. It totally
includes five steps: imput——first draft——mutual
evaluation among students——second draft——
evaluation by teachers——communication between
325
Zhengying W.
An Exploration on Teaching Mode for English Writing for Application-Orientation Undergraduate Universities - The Study of the Intermingling of Product Approach and Process Approachs.
DOI: 10.5220/0006449803250328
In ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV (ISME 2016), pages 325-328
ISBN: 978-989-758-208-0
Copyright
c
 2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
325

teachers and students——final version, in each of
which students are in the center, and teachers olny
play the role of monitoring and enlightening. Like
Product Approach, when advocated vigorously, it
was also questioned by many scholars. For example,
Rodrigues once said, “Process Approach seemes to
let students write freely, but they indeed need
grammatical structure, immitation, as well as various
writing techniques”(Rodrigues, R.J., 1985);
Horowitz claimed “Process Approach overstresses
writing process without the immediate completion
like Product Approach does, which makes students
have no enough ability to deal with all kinds of
examinations, and too much team evaluation will
also let students fail to evalute themselves
correctly”(Horowitz, D., 1986). In fact, we believe
these two approaches have their own advantages,
and we’d better apply different method in different
teaching content and teaching steps, melting the two
approaches organically.
3 LEARNING STYLES OF
STUDENTS IN APPLICATION-
ORIENTATION
UNDERGRADUATE
UNIVERSITIES IN CHINA
“Learning style” is the typical mode or habit of
students’ feeling, remembering, thinking and
resoving problems in leaning activities. Currently,
private universities in China pay more attention to
cultivating applied talents, and while public
universities mainly focuse on research talents. Some
scholars consult the theoretical analysis and relative
scales of some famous western scholars such as
Entwistle, Schmeck, and etc. and contrast the
difference of learning styles between Chinese
private universities and public universities through
exploration and tests. Students in private universities
prefer to regard learning as passive absorbing
knowledge, and meanwhile they emphasize the
application of knowledge they learned to pratice; On
one hand, private university students stress more the
purpose of acquiring certificates, and on the other
hand, they possess more the interest on the specialty
and content they learned; Students in private
universities adopt more two superficial process
strategies, which are “mechanic remembering” and
“fact remembering”, but the extent of their adoption
of “organization” and “critical thinking” , two deep
process strategies, are obviously higher than those of
public ones; The self-management of learning
process and result are also apparently higher than
that of public universities, but they rely more on the
outer management of learning process; Students in
private universities have more clear purpose to get
higher education and choice of their majors, and
worry more to be defeated. Clearly, learning styles
in private universities have more mixed
characteristics than those in public universities.
Apart from these, the result shows that students in
private ones more depend on learning materials and
teachers’ guidance and are easier to be influenced by
environment of their universities(Genshu Lu, 2006).
The above contrast manifests powerfully the
differences of students’ learning styles between
private and public universities.
Some western scholars such as Kember studied
the influence of teachers’ conception of teaching and
teaching modes on their students’ learning modes.
The result shows the direct reason of influence on
learning effect is students’ learning styles, which are
affected mainly by teachers’ teaching modes. Based
on front-line teachers' position, this paper explores
what kind of modes teachers in application-
orientation undergraduate universities should have to
cultivate, keep and develop students’ good learning
styles, and finally realize the teaching aim to get
good learning effect for students. Teaching methods
are affected by teachers’ conception of teaching,
which nowadays are focused on students.
4 THE ORGANIC
INTERMINGLING OF
PRODUCT APPROACH AND
PROCESS APPROACH
We’d better explain grammatical structure and
writing techniques based on given samples for
students in application-orientation undergraduate
universities because they depend on outer
management in the process of their writing, are
affected by environment of the universities easily
and have no enough self-confidence in their learning
ability. During the whole process of English
Writing, we can divide teaching content into two
parts: theoretical analysis based on Product
Approach, and class writing based on Process
Approach.
Theoretical analysis must be implemented by
Product Approach from easy to difficult, step by step
and one link closely after another. Normally, we
begin with diction, and then sentences, paragraphs,
and finally the whole composition, analyzing
ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV
326
ISME 2016 - International Conference on Information System and Management Engineering
326

necessary grammatical points and various writing
techniques, as well as providing plenty of samples
for students to imitate. Of course, the object of
samples’ analysis is not to imitate, but to make
students acquire and improve necessary writing
techniques, comprehend forms and contents of
various kinds of articles, and lay a solid foundation
consciously for the internalization of structure and
language characteristicts in samples into their own
knowledge in mind. In teaching process with
Product Approach, esp. in imitation, teachers are
supposed to adopt diversified forms to rich students’
express methods and try their best to avoid some
defects that may occur such as mechanical imitation
and dull expression. Students can transcribe
language materials they are learning, focusing on
grammatical points such as spelling rules and
puncutations; They can practice simple writing
around a certain grammatical point; They can utilize
different sentence patterns to express one meaning,
and even can be required to disrupt the original
patterns and rewrite the passage again with another
writing style after completing imitation. Through
these ways students can experience the complexity
of writing process, importance of writing styles and
flexibility of English sentences. They turn
knowledge into skills and apply them, and their
creativity is improved to some extent.
The internal characters and external situation of
universities require courses must be combined with
all kinds of examinations. Up till now, in Anhui
Sanlian University, we combine with writing project
of TEM 4. We also use Product Approach in this
content because it is easier for teachers to conduct,
easier for students to begin their study, make up for
the lack of language knowledge, acquire sense of
achievement and enhance confidence in English
writing.
Class writing is the other main content which is
implemented with Process Approach. English
Writing has powerful practicality and applicability,
so the practical link, class writing, accounts for a
large proportion in this course. After theoretical
analysis, students are required to complete a
composition in class. The concrete steps are as
follows: first draft——mutual evaluation among
students——second draft——evaluation by
teachers——communication between teachers and
students——final version(“imput” is done in the
phase of theoretical analysis, which is the important
aspect of the organic integration of the above two
approaches). Generally speaking, we use 3-4 periods
to finish all the six steps, among which first draft,
mutual evaluation among students, second draft,
evaluation by teachers and communication between
teachers and students must be ended in class, and at
last students hand in first draft, second draft, and
final one, which are all written in one book in order
to faciliate teachers to know and direct students’
learning and make it convenient for students to
summarize later. We also encourage students to
hand in their outlines, notes and to discuss with
teachers about how to improve themselves.
Process Approach can reflect students’
dominant role well and stimulate students' initiative
and creativity, but with this approach students tend
to meet too many barriers, have difficulties in
writing and then lose confidence, and finally desired
effect cannot be reached. The key to overcome this
shortcoming lies in carrying out proper group
discussion with effective monitoring. Group
discussion can be implemented throughout the
whole teaching process, esp. the course of using
Process Approach. The premise and center of group
discussion are teachers’ questions, that is to say, in
different phases, teachers get feedback information
in time and ask necessary problems, promoting all
students take active part in all activities and helping
them express their idea, summarize the knowledge
they learned and the problems they meet. The
critical point is the appropriateness of teachers’
questions, including sequence, methods, clarity and
complexity, etc, all of which need teachers’
considerate thinking. Besides, students’ answering
mode should also be clarified, no permitting
freedom to answer, otherwise those shy students will
lose interest and therefore participation of all
students will be affected. We adopt different
methods to discuss in group in different phases. For
instance, in mutual evaluation among students, we
adopt “reaction type”: students write teachers’
questions down when they discuss the “first draft”,
and teachers conduct patrol-inspection, collecting
students’ feedback information; In “second draft”,
we utilize “mutual aid method”, encouraging them
to help each other, find answer and resolve
problems; In “communication between teachers and
students”, we can use “involved type”, that is to say,
teachers may write problems students have or he
himself sets onto the blackboard, and then ask
students to answer together, or let one student put
forward a question, and ask all of other students to
answer; During this step, we also can adopt “review
type”: with brief summary teachers help students
review and consolidate knowledge they have learned
in handwriting.
An Exploration on Teaching Mode for English Writing for Application-Orientation Undergraduate Universities - The Study
of the Intermingling of Product Approach and Process Approachs
327
An Exploration on Teaching Mode for English Writing for Application-Orientation Undergraduate Universities - The Study of the
Intermingling of Product Approach and Process Approachs
327

5 COPYRIGHT FORM
Zhengying Wu, October 17th, 2016
6 CONCLUSIONS
Factually, we have intermingled organically Product
Approach and Process Approach in English Writing
for several years, and it has been found that this
method take advantage of the benefits of both of
them better. Of course, it requires teachers’ careful
planning for class teaching and their proper lead,
direction and supervision to overcome disadvantages
of these two approaches. As for this course which is
not easy to be conducted, we believe the only way to
summarize more effective teaching methods and
more better teaching mechanism is respecting
students’ dominant position and objective law of
teaching, paying attention to teaching process,
sticking to reform and innovation, and exploring
contiually in practice.
This paper is the result of the project research.
Name of the projects: Comprehensive Reform of
English Major (2013zy086); English Undergraduate
Teaching Team (13zlgc039)
REFERENCES
Gang Cui, Lisheng Luo, 2006. English Teaching Theory
and Practice, Foreign Economic and Trade University
Press. Beijing, 1
st
edition.
Genshu Lu, Dehong Yu, 2006. Research on Private
University Students Learning Style, Shanxi People's
Education Press. Xian, 1
st
edition.
Guanzhong Lu, 2007. Thinking and Exploration of
Subject Construction in New Founded Application-
Orientation Undergraduate Universities. Chinese
Higher Education.
Horowitz,D., 1986. Process, Not Product: Less Than
Meets the Eye. TESOL Quarterly.
Rodrigues,R.J., 1985. Moving Away From Writing –
process Worship. English Journal.
ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV
328
ISME 2016 - International Conference on Information System and Management Engineering
328