a) describes the different approaches generally used when teaching writing, their advantages and disadvantages.
b) discusses how these may be combined to exploit the advantages and avoid the disadvantages of each.
a) Approaches to writing
There are three common approaches to teaching writing:
1. A traditional
“product” approach: This was part of structural approaches to teaching English and common before the 1970s.
Writing was seen merely as a way of providing further practice of whatever
language was currently being taught. So if eg the Ls had been studying
prepositions of place and lexical items
in the field, they might be asked first to read a model text describing a room
in a house, and then to write a similar description of a room in their house
producing eg There’s a single bed in my
bedroom and next to it there’s a bedside table. On the bedside table there’s a
lamp… etc. The text would be marked
and graded by the teacher.
Advantage: This was a systematic approach which did not overload the learners at
any point – first the linguistic items were presented and practised, then
recognised again in the model, before they had to be produced.
Disadvantages: i) It is entirely T. led. ii) It
left out of account the fact that when writing we always have an intended
purpose (to persuade, entertain, inform etc) and an intended reader. The two
factors combined will affect eg the choice of information included, the style
of writing etc. Here there was no realistic purpose other than to use the TL
accurately, and no presumed reader other than the teacher.
2. A process approach: In the 1970s, people started to argue that writing was a matter of going
through various processes – brainstorming content; selecting and rejecting
content; organising content; drafting; revising etc as well as “just”
formulating the language needed – and that these processes needed to be worked
on in the classroom.
Advantages: i) Ls became more aware of the fact that it wasn’t possible just
to write down linguistically accurate
sentences in order to produce an effective piece of writing.
ii) This fitted with a focus on collaborative rather than simply
individual learning which was also being proposed at the time and, together
with the recognition of the need to develop
autonomy, led to writing being seen as something that could not only be done in
PW/GW but also assessed by the learners themselves.
Disadvantages: i) Factors such as organisation
of information, style of text etc may be culturally based, and without
awareness of the differences between English texts and those in their own L1,
learners might well think about these processes, but still produce a text
which, to an English speaking reader, “made no sense” in terms of organisation,
the stylistic effect achieved etc.
ii) At the time, writing was
mainly done by hand or on a typewriter. A systematic, linear approach to
planning, drafting and revising therefore made sense – if the writer had
written the full text and realised something had been left out, they would need
to start again from the beginning. Since the advent of computers, however, this
process no longer needs to be linear, as changes can easily be made (and
usually are) at any moment of writing the text.
3. A genre approach: In the late 70s and 80s interest grew in
the concept of genre – the idea that different genres of text (research papers
in medical journals, human interest articles in a newspaper, advertisements
etc) would each have recognisable features shared with other examples of the
same genre but not necessarily with other genres. They might be features of layout,
organisation, content or language. Eg: Swales pointed to the use of “hedging”
in academic papers, while apposition is
a common feature of press articles. The genre approach to writing posited that,
as these features were not necessarily universal but might be culture-specific,
learners needed to be sensitised to the features before they could be expected
to use them. This led to a return of the “model”, which exemplified the
features, and an initial focus on what they were (often through guided
discovery) and possible controlled practise of the features before the learners
were expected to produce a similar text.
Advantages : Learners were fully aware of all aspects – layout, content,
organisation and language – of what they needed to produce. Where necessary
controlled practice of specific features could be given to ensure that they
could control these before asking learners to apply them to a specific text.
Disadvantages: i) Although the planning, drafting, revising stages of writing may no
longer be completely linear, they are still necessary, and the genre approach
did not focus on these.
ii) The genre approach has been criticised for leading to a
prescriptive, culture-biased view of
writing, where the “English way” is seen as “right” and something that learners
must conform to, thus stifling creativity.
b) How can these approaches be combined?
4. Product/genre approaches - combination: It has already
been seen that the genre approach already incorporates many features of the traditional
product approach:
i) The genre approach starts with a model. However, disadvantage 1(i)
can be avoided if the analysis of the model is done in PW/GW through guided
discovery– eg Ls could be given two versions of the text – a “good” and “bad”
version and asked which version they preferred and why; or a single version
could be given with a guided discovery task – pointer questions focusing the Ls’ attention on the relevant features to be analysed and “noticed”. This would
avoid disadvantage 1 (ii) of the product approach and also inserts the collaborative,
constructivist element found in the process approach into the activity sequence.
ii) Once the features have been recognised in a genre approach, controlled practice can be given before the
learners are actually asked to write anything. Eg if the feature was the use
of connective expressions, Ls could be given a gapped text and asked to choose
suitable connectives to complete it; if the feature was paragraph organisation
– eg the use of a topic sentence, and the subsequent development of the basic
idea in that sentence, learners could be given a paragraph with the sentences
jumbled, and have to put them in order. This retains the systematic
presentation - practice - production sequence of the product approach (point 1)
and applies it to discourse, ensuring that learners are fully confident and in
control of the features before they are asked to produce them.
5. Process/genre
approaches - combination: After the analysis and controlled practice of
the genre features, there is no reason why aspects of the process approach
cannot be incorporated into the writing of the target text.
i) Learners can collaborate on planning, organising, drafting and
revising the target text thus avoiding disadvantages 1(i) and (ii) and 3 (i).
If they are working towards a situation where they will need to write by hand
(eg for a public exam like Cambridge First), the steps in the process can still
be done linearly. If not – eg if they are Business English learners working on report
writing – they can use their laptops, and work more “normally”, adding to, deleting or changing ideas and
linguistic phrasing at any moment as they work. In both situations,
disadvantage 2(ii) is no longer a problem.
ii) Ls can also be helped to self-assess and/or peer assess. “Helped” because this is a skill that needs training and practice. However, the use of eg a checklist with questions like the following (as relevant to the genre) can be used: Does each paragraph start with a topic sentence? Can you find examples of informal style in the text? Does the text use the simple past for completed events and the present perfect for past to present events? Etc. Thus this technique from the process approach can be used to focus on all features, whether purely linguistic (as in the product approach) or of discourse/genre.
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