CURRENT

APPROACHES TO THE
TEACHING OF
WRITING
Lecture 2
Teaching Writing in EFL/ESL
Joy Robbins

TODAYS SESSION
Today were going to do the following:
1.

2.

(Very quickly) review Product and

Process writing, which we talked about
last week
Look at an approach which is attracting
lots of attention at the moment:
The genre approach
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FIRST, A REVIEW

First, though, lets remind ourselves of the

fundamentals behind the Product and the
Process Approaches that we looked at in last
weeks lecture

THE PRODUCT APPROACH

Work with a partner.
What is the Product Approach? How do
you use it? Is it popular now? What does
it focus on? What else do you remember
about it?
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THE PRODUCT APPROACH (1)

The Product Approach dominated the teaching of writing

in ELT until the 1980s
It involves working on writing at sentence level, filling in
missing connectors (nevertheless, however), for example, or
using model texts which the students copy
Normally each model text contains lots of examples of a
specific type of language the teacher wants the students to
focus on, e.g. the past simple
The students read the model text, and do exercises which
focus on the language in the model text (e.g. the past
simple)
Finally, the students might be asked to transform a text
which is in the present simple into the past simple. The
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model text will help them do this

THE PRODUCT APPROACH (2)

The focus is obviously on grammatical

accuracy. This reflects the preoccupation of ELT
methodology at the timethe Audiolingual
Method was in fashion

THE PROCESS APPROACH

The Process Approach overtook the Product
Approach as the dominant writing methodology
in the 1980s in Britain & North America
Books like Tricia Hedges Writing (1988) and Ron
White & Valerie Arndts Process Writing (1991)
helped ensure the Process methodology became
well known amongst language teachers
The approach began to be critiqued in the 1990s
and this criticism continues today
However, the Process methodology continues to
be popular

THE COGNITIVISTS & THE

PROCESS APPROACH
The cognitivist Process Approach researchers
(e.g. Flower & Hayes 1981; Hairston 1982; Zamel
1983) tried to find out how real writers
composed in real situations
The Product Approach had given students the
impression that the composing process was
linear. Students planned first, then wrote like
this:

planning

writing

However, the cognitivists found out that real

writers didnt write like this at all

WHAT DO REAL WRITERS DO?

[Writing] is messy, recursive, convoluted, and
uneven. Writers write, plan, revise, anticipate,
and review throughout the writing process,
moving back and forth among the different
operations involved in writing without any
apparent plan. (Hairston 1982: 85)

Good writers plan throughout the writing

process, changing things many times if necessary,
and writing multiple drafts
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WHAT DO REAL WRITERS DO?

(2)

Good writers may rehearse or discuss what they

want to write before they actually do it
Good writers read their writing carefully, trying
to imagine how clear their ideas are to a reader.
If something isnt clear, they change it
The motto of the Process Approach is: Writing is
rewriting
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WHAT DO REAL WRITERS DO?

(3)
The Process Approach emphasizes:
(1) the importance of writing multiple drafts
(2) The importance of revision
(3) The importance of planning throughout
(4) The importance of making your writing
reader-friendly
(5) The importance of writing in different styles
for different audiences
The cognitivists tried to get students to go
through all of these stages when they wrote

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MOVING ON
Now lets move on, and talk about an
alternative to Product and Process, the
Genre Approach
Lets start off by talking about what a genre
is

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WHAT IS A GENRE?

Hylands (2004) excellent book on genre begins by

providing a very straightforward definition: Genre is a
term for grouping texts together, representing how
writers typically use language to respond to recurring
situations. (p.4)
Hyland goes on to say:
Good writers are aware that what a reader finds in a
text is always influenced by what he or she has found in
previous texts and that what writers want to say is
necessarily affected by what readers expect them to say.
[Writers] choices of grammar, vocabulary, content, and
organization therefore depend on the situations in which
they are writing. (Hyland 2004: 9)
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WHAT IS A GENRE? (2)

According to Swales (1990), genres are

characterized by their 'communicative purposes'
as well as by their patterns of 'structure, style,
content and intended audience' (p.58).
In the arena of English for Academic Purposes
(EAP), then, genre 'refers to a class of
communicative events, such as, for example, a
seminar presentation, a university lecture, or an
academic essay' (Paltridge 2001: 2).

Make a list of genres teachers might want to

focus on in (i) EAP and (ii) general English
classrooms

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TEACHING WRITING USING THE

GENRE APPROACH

Ivani (2004) summarizes the genre approach as follows:

The key point in this theoretical tradition is that texts
vary linguistically according to their purpose and context.
As a result, it is possible to specify linguistic features of
particular text-types. [] Good writing is not just correct
writing, but writing which is linguistically appropriate to
the purpose it is serving. (pp.232-3)
So teachers need to systematically analyze what the
genre of writing theyre trying to teach looks like. This
analysis may consist of looking at how writers typically use
organization, grammar, or vocabulary when writing in
the genre, as well as getting learners to understand the
writers purposes
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TYPES OF GENRE ANALYSIS

There are a number of different types of genre

analysis
Myskow & Gordon (2010), one of this weeks
readings, will give you an example of how the
genre approach can be used to teach writing
And now were going to have a
look at how a textbook by Devitt
et al (2004) uses genre-based
teaching
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ANALYSING THE GENRE

OF STUDENT EMAILS
Take a look at Devitt et als (2004)
approach to analysing a genre on the
handout, then try out their ideas on
the student emails
This will then help you decide what to
concentrate on when you teach
students to write emails to their
lecturers
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GENRE ANALYSIS:
DISCUSSION

What, in your opinion, are the strengths and

weaknesses of this genre analysis approach?
In your teaching context (or, if youre not a
teacher, a teaching context youre familiar with),
do you think teachers would be willing and able
to take this approach?
How would the students react?
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ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE

GENRE APPROACH
Hyland (2004) lists a number of strengths of the
genre approach

Genre-based teaching systematically addresses

texts and contexts
teaching materials are based on the ways language
is actually used in particular writing contexts rather
than on our general impressions of what happens.
Teaching, in other words, is data-driven rather than
intuition-driven. (Hyland 2004: 12)
This is in contrast to the product approach, and
arguably also in contrast to some types of
process-based teaching

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ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE

GENRE APPROACH (2)
Genre-based teaching is empowering
L2 learners commonly lack knowledge of the
typical patterns and possibilities of variation
within the texts that possess cultural capital in
particular social groups. Genre approaches are
committed to a redistribution of literary
resources to help learners to gain admission to
particular discourse communities (Hyland 2004:
14)
What Hyland is saying, then, is that many nonnative speakers dont know how what a
genre in English is supposed to look like
and that the genre approach will show
them

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IF YOU DONT TELL ME, HOW

CAN I KNOW?

Hylands argument brings to mind the title of an

article about writing,
If you dont tell me, how can I know? A case
study of four international students
learning to write the U.S. way
(Angelova & Riazantseva 1999)
One of the strengths of the genre approach,
then, is that it tells students what the genre
of, for example, a masters assignment (or a
simple email) might look like
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ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE

GENRE APPROACH (3)
Hyland (2004) argues that because the genre
approach requires teachers to systematically analyze
texts for grammatical, lexical, and organizational
features, this will make them better teachers:

Genre-based teaching assists teacher development

Coming to terms with these issues makes teachers better
discourse analysts, and this in turn helps make them
better teachers. A reflective teacher is therefore also a
more effective teacher. A person who understands how
texts are typically structured, understood, and used is in a
better position to intervene successfully in the writing of
his or her students, to provide more informed feedback on
writing, to make reasoned decisions about the teaching
practices and materials to use. (Hyland 2004: 16)
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ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE

GENRE APPROACH
The main argument sometimes levelled
against the genre approach is that it is
somehow mechanical and uncreative
Hyland (2004) acknowledges that if genres are
seen as recipes, then this is a danger
But within every genre theres variation:
different writers may decide, for instance, to
write an assignment or a journal article in
different ways, all of which are successful
So theres no reason why genre-based teaching
should become boring and repetitive
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TEACHING ACTIVITIES USING

THE GENRE APPROACH
Come up with a list of teaching activities you
could use when following a genre approach
to teaching writing

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TEACHING ACTIVITIES USING

THE GENRE APPROACH:
SUGGESTIONS (1)
Here

are some of Hylands (2004) ideas for

genre-based writing activities:

Text tasks
Naming stages and identifying their purposes
Sequencing, rearranging, matching, and
labelling text stages
Comparing texts with omissions, changes, or
different structures
Identifying different and similar sample texts
as particular genres

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TEACHING ACTIVITIES USING

THE GENRE APPROACH:
SUGGESTIONS (2)
Language tasks
Reorganizing or rewriting scrambled or
unfinished paragraphs
Completing gapped sentences or an entire
cloze from formatting clues
Substituting a feature (e.g., tense, modality,
voice, topic sentence)
Using skeletal texts to predict language forms
and meaning
Collecting examples of a language feature,
perhaps with a concordancer
Working in groups to correct errors, circle
particular features, match one feature with
another, etc.

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TEACHING ACTIVITIES USING

THE GENRE APPROACH:
SUGGESTIONS (3)
Collaborative writing tasks
Teacher-led whole-class construction on
blackboard or OHP
Collecting information through research
and interviewing
Small-group construction of texts for
presentation to the whole class
Completing unfinished or skeletal texts
Creating a parallel text following a
given model (p.135)
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DISCUSSION: APPROACHES TO
THE TEACHING OF WRITING
Which of the three writing pedagogies which
weve looked atproduct, process, and genredo
you identify with the most? Why?
How appropriate would these approaches be to
your teaching context, or a teaching context with
which you are familiar (e.g. one you were a
student in)?
If you were learning to write in a foreign
language, would you like your teacher to use any
of these approaches? Why (not)?
Do you think its possible to combine ideas from
all three of the approaches? If so, how would you
do it?

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REFERENCES
Angelova M & Riazantseva A (1999) If you dont tell me, how can I know? A case
study of four international students learning to write the U.S. way. Written
Communication 16(4): 491-525.
Devitt A et al (2004) Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres. New
York: Pearson.
Flower LS & Hayes JR (1981) A cognitive process theory of writing. College
Composition & Communication 32: 365-387.
Hairston M (1982) The winds of change: Thomas Kuhn and the revolution in the
teaching of writing. College Composition and Communication 33(1): 76-88.
Hedge T (1988) Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hyland K (2004) Genre and Second Language Writing. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Ivani R (2004) Discourses of writing and learning to write. Language & Education
18(3): 220-245. [XD Collection]
Myskow G & Gordon K (2010) A focus on purpose: using a genre approach in an EFL
writing class. ELT Journal 64(3): 283-292.
Paltridge B (2001) Genre and the Language Learning Classroom. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Swales JM (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
White RV & Arndt V (1991) Process Writing. Harlow: Longman.
Zamel V (1983) The composing processes of advanced ESL students: six case studies. 29
TESOL Quarterly 17: 165-187.

THIS WEEKS READING

Flower L & Hayes JR (1981) A cognitive process theory of writing.
College Composition & Communication 32(4): 365-387. [XD8287]

This is a classic article about the writing process

Its in the librarys XD Collection. Go to the issue desk and ask for
XD8287. The librarian will give you the article for 4 hours, to give you
time to read/photocopy it

Myskow G & Gordon K (2010) A focus on purpose: using a genre

approach in an EFL writing class. ELT Journal 64(3): 283-292.

This is a clear example of how a genre approach can be used in class

Here are the readings assigned last weekIf you havent read them all yet,
do so this week!
Ivani R (2004) Discourses of writing and learning to write. Language &
Education 18(3): 220-245. [XD Collection: XD8663]
Raimes A (1991) Out of the woods: emerging traditions in the teaching of writing.
TESOL Quarterly 25(3): 407-430.
Tsui, A.B.M. (1996) Learning how to teach ESL writing. In D. Freeman & J.C.
Richards (eds.), Teacher Learning in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp.97-119.

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