Current Approaches to the

Teaching of Writing

Lecture 2

Teaching Writing in EFL/ESL

Joy Robbins
 Today’s Session

Today we’re going to do the following:

1. (Very quickly) review Product and Process

writing, which we talked about last week
2. 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, let’s remind ourselves of the fundamentals behind the

Product and the Process Approaches that we looked at in last
week’s lecture…

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 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 model text will help
them do this

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 The Product Approach (2)

• The focus is obviously on grammatical accuracy. This reflects the

preoccupation of ELT methodology at the time—the Audiolingual
Method was in fashion

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 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 Hedge’s Writing (1988) and Ron White & Valerie
Arndt’s 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

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 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 didn’t write like
this at all…

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 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 isn’t 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 let’s move on, and talk about an alternative to Product and
Process, the Genre Approach…

Let’s start off by talking about what a ‘genre’ is…

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 What is a genre?
 Hyland’s (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
Ivanič (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 they’re 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 week’s readings, will give you
an example of how the genre approach can be used to teach writing

And now we’re 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 al’s (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 you’re not a teacher, a teaching

context you’re 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 non-native speakers don’t
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 don’t tell me, how can I know?’

• Hyland’s argument brings to mind the title of an article about writing,

‘If you don’t 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 master’s 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 there’s variation: different writers may
decide, for instance, to write an assignment or a journal article in
different ways, all of which are successful…
So there’s 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 Hyland’s (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 we’ve looked at—
product, process, and genre—do 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 it’s 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 don’t 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.
Ivanič 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. TESOL
Quarterly 17: 165-187.

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This week’s 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
 It’s in the library’s 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 week…If you haven’t read them all yet, do so this week!
Ivanič 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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