2018 Annual Conference of China English Language Education Association (CELEA2018)

221 / 2018-07-20 16:36:36

Using a Genre Approach to Teach EFL Short Play Writing

genre approach, short play writing, creativity

Plenary track > 中国特色英语教学研究

This presentation reports a study of investigating the instructional efficacy of a genre-based approach to teaching EFL short play writing in China. The subjects’ were English major freshmen majoring in English education. The subjects were required to read English plays that we provided to explore the literary genre before our instruction. During the instruction, we discussed with the subjects about the genre and gave explicit instruction of how to create short plays. After the instruction, the subjects were required to write an English short play and revise them. The evaluation of the subjects’ short plays mainly focused on theme, creativity, plot development, language use and mechanical mistakes. The results of the teaching experiment showed that the genre approach was effective to help the subjects grasp the features of the specific genre and enhance their overall play writing performance, especially in the aspects of creativity and plot development. Students’ semi-structured interview and reflection journals were also adopted to investigate the subjects’ attitudes toward the genre approach and suggestions. The results indicated that making full use of the genre approach was essential to facilitate short play writing teaching and learning.