An empirical study on the application of process approach in non-English majors’ writing

Abstract

Process approach has been introduced to China for more than two decades. This approach which views writing as a recursive mental cognitive process is one of the most popular methods for teaching writing. It attaches more importance to a series of activities in the process of writing and the interaction among the student writers. Meanwhile, it emphasizes that writing should be learned in the writing process. This paper aims at exploring the influence of process approach on non-English majors. The author first made a questionnaire to investigate how the non-English majors accomplished their writing tasks and then did an experiment to explore the influence of process approach on their writing ability. The research findings show that non-English majors tend to employ the traditional product approach in writing and that process approach has positive influence on their writing ability. This study sheds light to non-English major teachers in teaching writing.