New directions in EFL writing: A Report from China

From May 21 to 24, 2004, I attended the 4th International Conference on ELT in China, held in Beijing. Held concurrently with this conference was the Basic English Education Symposium. Of the nearly 500 presentations and workshops at the conference, 49 were focused on English writing instruction and assessment at the college level, involving both English and non-English majors. Considering the fact that the field of L2 writing is gradually branching into the EFL context, I thought a brief report of these writing-related presentations might inform the JSLW readership of recent developments in the teaching of and research on English writing in China, the country with the largest population of EFL student writers in the world. The conference was organized by the China English Language Education Association, Beijing Foreign Studies University, and the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. The first conference was held in Guanzhou in 1985, and since then has become a major event in the Chinese ELT circle. Over 1000 English teachers and researchers participated in this year’s conference, the majority of whom were from China. More than 20 countries and regions were represented in this conference, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, and the United States.