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Badger & White 2000 A Process Genre Approach To Writing
Badger & White 2000 A Process Genre Approach To Writing
teaching writing
Richard Badger and Goodith White
ELT Journal Volume 54/2 April 2000 © Oxford University Press 2000 153
Pincas (1982a: 24) sees learning as 'assisted imitation', and adopts many
techniques (e.g. substitution tables ibid.: 94), where learners respond to
a stimulus provided by the teacher. However, her comment that, at the
stage of free writing, 'students should feel as if they are creating
something of their own' (ibid.: 110) suggests a view of learners as being
ready to show rather more initiative.
In short, product-based approaches see writing as mainly concerned with
knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development as
mainly the result of the imitation of input, in the form of texts provided
by the teacher.
Process Although there are many different process approaches to writing (see,
approaches for example, Hedge 1988, White and Arndt 1991), they share some core
features. Tribble suggests that process approaches stress
. . . writing activities which move learners from the generation of ideas
and the collection of data through to the 'publication' of a finished
text. (1996: 37)
Writing in process approaches is seen as predominantly to do with
linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less
emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar
and text structure.
There are different views on the stages that writers go through in
producing a piece of writing, but a typical model identifies four stages:
prewriting; composing/drafting; revising; and editing (Tribble 1996: 39).
This is a cyclical process in which writers may return to pre-writing
activities, for example, after doing some editing or revising.
A typical prewriting activity in the process approach would be for
learners to brainstorm on the topic of houses. At the composing/drafting
stage they would select and structure the result of the brainstorming
session to provide a plan of a description of a house. This would guide
the first draft of a description of a particular house. After discussion,
learners might revise the first draft working individually or in groups.
Finally, the learners would edit or proof-read the text.
In process approaches, the teacher primarily facilitates the learners'
writing, and providing input or stimulus is considered to be less important.
Like babies and young children who develop, rather than learn, their
mother tongue, second language learners develop, rather than consciously
learn, writing skills. Teachers draw out the learners' potential.
Process approaches have a somewhat monolithic view of writing. The
process of writing is seen as the same regardless of what is being written
and who is writing. So while the amount of pre-writing in producing a
postcard to a friend and in writing an academic essay are different (see
Tribble 1996: 104), this is not reflected in much process teaching.
While a process approach may ignore the context in which writing
happens, this is unusual. For example Hedge (1988: 15 and passim)
154 Richard Badger and Goodith White
identifies four elements of the context that pre-writing activities should
focus on: the audience, the generation of ideas, the organization of the
text, and its purpose.
Summarizing, we can say that process approaches see writing primarily
as the exercise of linguistic skills, and writing development as an
unconscious process which happens when teachers facilitate the exercise
of writing skills.
Genre approaches Genre approaches are relative newcomers to ELT. However, there are
strong similarities with product approaches and, in some ways, genre
approaches can be regarded as an extension of product approaches.
Like product approaches, genre approaches regard writing as pre-
dominantly linguistic but, unlike product approaches, they emphasize
that writing varies with the social context in which it is produced. So, we
have a range of kinds of writing—such as sales letters, research articles,
and reports—linked with different situations (Flowerdew 1993: 307). As
not all learners need to operate in all social contexts, this view of texts
has implications for the writing syllabus.
For genre analysts, the central aspect of the situation is purpose.
Different kinds of writing, or genres, such as letters of apology, recipes,
or law reports, are used to carry out different purposes. Indeed, Swales
defines a genre
. . . as a class of communicative events, the members of which share
some set of communicative purposes. (1990: 58)
Genres are also influenced by other features of the situation, such as the
subject matter, the relationships between the writer and the audience,
and the pattern of organization. This parallels Hedge's (1988) approach,
described above. Martin (1993: 120) offers a diagrammatic explanation
of genre.
In terms of writing development, genre approaches have many
similarities with product approaches. Cope and Kalantzis (1993: 11)
talk of a wheel model of genre literacy. This wheel has three phases:
Figure 1: Martin's
models of genre
Purpose
[Genre)
Text
Towards a We will describe our model of the process genre approach in terms of a
synthesis: writing view of writing and a view of the development of writing. The essential
in the process idea here is that the writing class recognizes that
genre approach
writing involves knowledge about language (as in product and genre
approaches), knowledge of the context in which writing happens and
The development of The development of writing will vary between different groups of
writing in a process learners because they are at different stages of their writing develop-
genre approach ment. Learners who know a lot about the production of a particular
genre, and are skilled in it, may need little or no input. Some groups of
learners will have a good awareness of how the potential audience may
constrain what is written. Other groups may lack knowledge of what
language is appropriate to a particular audience. In this case, the
learners need some kind of input in terms of, say, the language
appropriate to a particular audience, or the skills in deciding whom the
potential audience may be. What input is needed will depend on their
particular group of learners.
158 Richard Badger and Goodith White
Figure 2: A genre
process model of
teaching writing A process genre model Possible input
of writing
Situation '
Purpose ^ Teacher
In many cases, the teacher is not able to find out what the learners know
or can do before the class. In this case, a deep-end approach modelled
on Willis (1996: 100) may be appropriate. Learners try to carry out one
element in a process genre, and then compare their texts or skills in text
production with some expert's (possibly the teacher's) version of this.
On the basis of this comparison, they or the teacher can then decide if
they need further input of knowledge or skills.
Where learners lack knowledge, we can draw on three potential sources:
the teacher, other learners, and examples of the target genre. Teachers
may provide input in terms of instruction (mention the number of
rooms), other learners may do the same in the less threatening context
of group work, but perhaps the most distinctive source of input about
contextual and linguistic knowledge in a genre process approach is
language awareness activities. Genre analysis attempts to reveal the
similarities between texts written for the same reason, and so it is likely
that these language awareness activities will be based on a corpus of the
relevant genre. Key materials for genre process teachers are sets of
corpora of the kinds of texts their learners want to write. In our house
description exercise, learners might investigate the kind of sentence
structure used in estate agents' descriptions of a house, the kind of
vocabulary used to make the position sound attractive and where the
price appears. Flowerdew (1993) and Dudley-Evans (1997) also suggest
activities such as using flow charts to illustrate the organization of
particular genres and translation.
Learners may also require input about the skills needed for writing. A
rich source here comes from observing other students and the teacher.
Teachers may find direct instruction on skills effective—think about why
you are writing the description—but an alternative is a demonstration by
the teacher or other skilled writer, possibly accompanied by a commentary
A process genre approach to teaching writing 159
attempting to explain the mental processes that underlie the exercise of the
skill. For example, teachers might explain why they chose to include
certain information about a house and leave out other information.
Figure 2 illustrates the possible input in the process genre. The use of
dashes is intended to indicate that input is not always required.