Investigating a Genre-based Approach to English News Writing in College

Abstract

Stemmed from Generic Structure Potential (GSP) Theory, Genre-based Teaching Approach (GTA) is a teaching method based on genre analysis. This study intends to apply GTA to News Writing Course in a Chinese university, hoping to construct a more effective genre-analysis-based teaching mode. Using quantitative methods, this one-semester long study was conducted with two English News Writing classes involving 58 sophomores as the participants. Data were collected through pre- and post-class tests. The result shows that GTA is effective in improving students’ ability of genre analysis and news writing.