Teaching Academic Writing through a Process-Genre Approach: A Pedagogical Exploration of an EAP Program in China

This paper explores a process-genre approach to teaching academic writing skills to advanced English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students. The 'reading-to-writing' tasks and procedures were designed to examine the feasibility of the approach for a doctoral English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) program in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years. Data for this action research were drawn from a collection of students' written tasks with peer-feedback and revisions spelled out, onsite researcher's observation notes, and two rounds of interviews with two selected groups of students. The results indicate that the participants benefited significantly through reading and analyzing peer-reviewed journal articles and getting familiar with the peer-review criteria for assessing academic texts. The approach stimulated the participants' interest in employing process writing skills and helped them understand the genre of disciplinary-specific academic writing. Issues with and implications for EAP learning and teaching in the Chinese context are discussed.