Assessing the Influence of Process Genre Approach in SPOC Blended Learning Environment on Chinese Students’ Writing Performance: A Quasi-Experimental Study

The present study aims to integrate process genre approach into a SPOC based blended learning environment at a university in China and investigate its effects on Chinese EFL learners’ overall writing performance and subcategories of writing components (organization, content, and language). The experimental group, comprising 33 participants, was put in a SPOC based blended learning environment by means of process genre approach, while the control group of 34 participants underwent the traditional offline setting. The quasi-experimental design was adopted, involving pre-test and post-test. Both the holistic scores and analytical assessment of content, organization, and language in their writings were collected after each test. Descriptive statistics, including means and standard deviations, evaluated the writing performance; t-tests were employed to assess the differences within the control group (CG) and experimental group (EG), with a significant level set at .05 alpha. The differences between the CG and EG were also examined. Research findings revealed that both CG and EG have made great accomplishments in writing at the end of that semester, while EG participants outperformed CG ones in that there were statistically significant differences in the total scores and three sub-scores between EG and CG after the experiment.