The Impact of Genre-Informed Persuasive Writing in the Chinese Tertiary Classroom

Abstract

Teaching approach is an important inquiry in second language (L2) writing scholarship. This study proposes that a genre-informed writing programme could be more effective than the current curriculum-material teaching programme in improving students’ writing of English as a foreign language (EFL) in China. To ensure the inference validity from the outcomes of the genre teaching, three interrelated studies were conducted. Study 1 was to validate whether the genre-specific rubric, Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) persuasive writing rubric, could be used to assess Chinese students’ writing in university. The eight Chinese teachers marked 10 official CET4 essays with both asTTle and CET4 rubrics, and the results showed that asTTle levels (2–6) could cover the different ranges of Chinese students’ writing, although more training was needed to obtain high marking reliability. Study 2 developed two contrastive teaching programmes by reviewing the literature. The key difference between the two programmes was the explicitness of the genre knowledge. In the curriculum programme, the genre knowledge was partially included, and the explanations of the genre knowledge was implicit although the teaching was followed the L1 genre process. In the genre-informed programme, five genre dimensions were included, the contrastive knowledge of English and Chinese writing tradition, and annotated writing samples were applied to enhance the explicitness. A panel of experts validated that the two plans were distinct from each other and abided by their respective principles. Study 3 implemented a 13-week intervention with a counterbalanced design in which the second group serves as the control for the first group in Phase 1 treatment, and vice versa in Phase 2. The results showed that the difference between the gains under two teaching programmes was large with (d=.86, d=.89) for genre teaching in two phases. The findings indicated that the genre-informed writing programme was more effective than the current teaching practice. With the alignment of the teaching plan, intervention and measurement of genre dimensions, the validity of inference from the intervention was justified. The significance of the study lies in that the explicitness of the genre knowledge is adapted to the local context instead of following the practice in the L1 context. The study will provide evidence for improving writing pedagogy in the EFL context.