This presentation reports innovative changes in a Chinese college EFL writing curriculum. Following Activity Theory, it analyzes the students’ learning process and factors were identified mediating the process. They were students’ motives, types of class activities, the instructor, the utilization of the mediation tools and the introduction of rules.
EFL writing competence is never readily acquired as the process of acquiring it entails the development of both language and cognition. Over the past three decades, numerous studies have thus been done on such basic issues as what constitutes ESL/EFL writing competence, how it can be acquired and what implications can be drawn for classroom procedures. Writing curriculum design and development is a topic of increasing interest for the same reason. Different scholars working with different theoretical models propose different curriculums to guide and inform classroom teaching without much consensus. This presentation reports a study of innovative changes in a college EFL writing curriculum in the Chinese EFL instructional context. Following the perspective of Activity Theory, the study analyzes the students’ learning process in the innovated writing course that highlight the integration of development of critical thinking and that of EFL writing competence. Sources of data included students’ written assignments and their reflective journals, interviews, and classroom observation. Data analysis and discussion show that five factors were identified that mediated students’ learning process and they were students’ motives, types of class activities (lectures, classroom presentation and discussion), the instructor, the utilization of the mediation tools (i.e., cases and examples) and the introduction of rules. The contributions of the study lie in two aspects. Theoretically, it exemplified the application of Activity Theory as a framework of analyzing the curriculum innovations in the EFL context, enriching the existing literature on the Chinese EFL students’ writing from the sociocultural perspective. Practically, the study provided empirical evidence from the students’ perspective for the Chinese EFL academic writing curriculum innovation. It also shed light for the design, implementation and reformation of Chinese EFL writing courses in other discourses.
