PRACTICES IN TEACHING ACADEMIC WRITING A COMPARISON OF WRITING TEACHERS IN CHINA AND THE US

Author

Jing Zhu, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

12-1-2012

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Applied Linguistics

First Advisor

McPherron, Paul

Abstract

This study compares the teaching practices of English academic writing teachers from China and the US. Research methods as questionnaire and interview were used to collect teacher's teaching practices, ways of constructing feedback, teaching philosophy and improvements in teaching. Participants of the current study were two teachers from two universities of China and three ESL academic writing teachers from a university in the US. The collected data were compared base on two themes: one was produce and process approaches; the other one was teacher's status in classroom and teaching. Based on the findings, American teachers' approaches were primarily process-based, and they also used studentcentered way of teaching, which puts students' needs and feelings on a considerable place. Chinese teachers' approaches were gradually changing to process-based, however, they were the authority in both teaching and providing feedback. The reason for Chinese teachers' ways of teaching can be attributed to the deep-rooted influence of the traditional teaching method, which sees teacher as the superior mentor. Also, it is necessary to introduce the process approach into Chinese universities to teach English academic writing and put it into practice