The Teaching of Writing: A Survey on the Approaches to Teaching Writing

Abstract
This paper presents a discussion on the different approaches in the teaching of writing. This includes a discussion on the process-based, product-based, genre-based, creative writing, rhetorical, personal, and scholarly/academic approaches. Also, this presents the critical and academic literacies perspectives on teaching second language writing. Then, the underlying philosophies of some of these approaches as well as implications for the classroom are also discussed. Finally, a proposal for teaching writing based on the drawing together of a number of these perspectives is then presented.

Introduction
A Filipino boy of five went excitedly and merrily to his parents, brothers, and friends to eagerly announce that he was able to write “I love you.” The ability to express one’s ideas, feelings, emotions, and opinions in writing in the second or foreign language is truly a major achievement. In like manner, the ability to effectively teach writing to second language (L2) learners is not only an achievement but also a lifetime accomplishment. To be able to do this, a teacher must not forget his fundamental goal: he should educate the students efficiently. More importantly, he should realize that writing is being taught in many different ways, and each method can be effective, if he believes in what he teaches.
The sole objective of this paper is to survey the different approaches to teaching writing. To achieve this objective, this paper aims to explain and answer the following:
1. What are the different approaches to teaching writing?
2. Are there advantages and disadvantages in each approach? What are these?
3. What are the implications of these approaches to the classrooms?
This study is significant because it entices the teachers of writing, especially the new ones, to discover the appropriate and exact approach, among the varied approaches, in teaching writing to L2 students. Also, it makes them aware that the approach they use can greatly affect the learning of the students—it could either make the students learn a lot or nothing at all. By teaching with the right approach to students, teachers will then be able to reach their goal.

Approach, Design, and Procedure
In this paper, the word approach is recurring. In the field of education, this word may be confusing with other terms like design and procedure. It is then necessary to define approach through Richards and Rodgers’ notions of approach, design and procedure (1986, as cited in Paltridge, 2004). Approach refers to the theory of language and language learning which underlies the particular approach or methodology. Design includes the objectives, organization, and content of the particular syllabus type, kinds of teaching and learning activities, teacher and learner roles, and the role of instructional materials. Procedure describes the actual classroom techniques and practices that might be employed within the particular method or approach.

The Product-based Approach
The first approach that this paper would discuss on is the product-based. In the teaching of writing, a teacher can always make a choice: to focus on the product or on the process itself. If a teacher concentrates on the product, he is only interested in the goal or aim of the task or activity. Almost half a century ago, teachers were mostly concerned with the final outcome or the final product of writing, like reports, essays, stories, or simply what the product should “look” like. During this period, compositions, according to Douglas Brown (2001, p. 335), “were supposed to (a) meet certain standards of prescribed English rhetorical style, (b) reflect accurate grammar, and (c) be organized in conformity with what the audience would consider to be conventional.”
Following this approach are the Controlled Composition Approach or the Model Approach and the Current-traditional Rhetoric Approach which are both influenced by the behaviorist theory (Silva, n.d). Under the Controlled Composition Approach, students are only tasked to copy words, phrases, and sentences to make them familiar of the conventions of the English language or their second language. Then, the time came when suggestions rose up that controlled composition was not enough. In Current-traditional Rhetoric Approach, students’ attention is focused basically on the form. Writing, in this approach, is primarily a matter of arranging words, phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs, and of fitting sentences and paragraphs into prescribed patterns.
The product approach may be effective for it helps L2 learners to be acquainted with the structures, forms, and conventions of the second language they are learning. This, moreover, enhances or develops their linguistic competence. Because students are controlled and limited, however, this hinders them from developing necessary skills in creating or composing, which is actually basic in all forms of writing. In other words, this approach takes away the awareness from the students that writing is not just all about the product through imitation or familiarization but much more on producing the outcome through following a certain process.

The Process-based Approach
Writing is a process. This inspires the second approach discussed in this paper: the process-based. There is actually no problem with the Product Approach for its underlying principles are still the crucial concerns of a teacher. But in due course of time, a teacher’s attention is inevitably brought to the L2 students when they are now seen as creators of language. As such, writers go through stages or processes before they are able to fully create or compose a piece of work. In 2001, Jeremy Harmer (p. 257) makes it clear that “a process approach aims to get to the heart of the various skills that should be employed when writing.” When concentrating on the process, the teacher pays attention to various stages that any piece of writing goes through.
The writing process includes planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing (Alinsangan, 2005). The purpose of planning is to generate ideas, choose a topic, focus, and organize. In drafting, a writer tries to write out all that he has planned. The goal is not really to come up with a complete text yet but a rough draft. When the draft is ready, a writer now proceeds to revising where he centers on the development and coherence of his work, especially to the effectiveness of the supporting ideas and clarity of the content. After revising, it is time for editing or proofreading to correct the errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics. When all the corrections are made, the writer is now ready for publishing. This doesn’t really mean to “publish” the work on a journal, magazine, newspaper, and the like, but at least to have his teacher, classmates, or even friends read the work.
More and more teachers of writing embrace this approach because it is unquestionable that students do develop several writing skills when using the process approach. There are times, however, when process writing is not appropriate, either because classroom time is limited, or because the teacher wants the students to write quickly as part of a task or activity. This approach, in other words, is time-consuming. No matter how effective this may be to students, the fact remains that this approach is not really practical, especially when used in writing courses with a limited time every writing session, like only two to three hours in a week.

The Genre-based Approach
There are various kinds of writing. This gives birth to the third approach presented in this paper: the genre-based. The genre approach to teaching writing focuses, as the terms suggests, on teaching particular genres that students need control of in order to succeed in particular settings (Paltridge, 2004). This might include a focus on language and discourse features of the texts, as well as the context in which the text is produced.
The underlying view of language in genre-based approach is that language is functional: It is through language that learners “get things done” and achieve certain goals. Another important aspect of this view is the position that language occurs in particular cultural and social contexts and can only be understood in relation to these contexts. Speakers and writers, thus, use particular genres in order to fulfill certain social functions and to achieve certain goals within particular social and cultural contexts. Language, then, in a genre perspective, is both purposeful and inseparable from the social and cultural context in which it occurs (Paltridge, 2004).
The goals and objectives of genre-based approach are to enable learners to use genres which are important for them to be able to participate in, and have access to. A genre-based syllabus will, then, be made up of a list of genres learners need to acquire, including relevant discourse and language level features and contextual information in relation to them. The starting point of the syllabus, however, is the genre, or whole text, even though lower levels aspects of language are focused on as well in the course of the program (Paltridge, 2004).
In the genre approach to writing, students study the texts first in the genre they are going to write before they do their own writing. Chris Tribble (1997, as cited in Harmer, 2001) suggests the following “data collection” procedure as a prelude to the writing of whatever genre (e.g. news article, book review, reaction paper, and the like). After collecting the data, students then study the style, structure, form, and convention of the genre they are about to write, like a news article. When they have sufficient knowledge, they can then begin writing.
A number of teachers also like the idea of having their students write in various genres because this makes the students versatile. This approach, however, only makes the students imitate the given styles or models which is rather prescriptive. The great danger here is: This would give them the idea that writing is just a form of reproduction rather than creation.

A Process Approach to Genre-based Teaching
Drawing together genre and process approaches, there is now a procedure which focuses on the process of learning about, and acquiring genres, rather than one which focuses solely on the end product, or specific variety of genre (Flowerdew, 1993; Badger & White, 2000, as cited in Paltridge, 2004). Flowerdew, Badge and White argue that a teacher cannot hope to predict the range of genres his students will, in time, need to be able to participate in. They strongly believe that a teacher needs to help his students see how they can go about discovering how genres differ from one another, how the same genre may vary, as well as what the particular expectations of the writing they are engaged in might actually be.
Johns (1993, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) discusses the importance of audience in the teaching of second language writing. She considers the expert as the “all-powerful reader” of students’ texts who can either accept or reject students’ writing as coherent and consistent with the conventions of the target discourse community or not. In her view knowledge of this audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and expectations is not only possible but essential for students writing in a second language.

The Creative Writing Approach
Writing is creative. The fourth approach discussed in this paper has something to do with students being creative: the creative writing. Harmer (2001, p. 259) defines creative writing as an “imaginative tasks such as poetry, short stories, and plays.” Thus, students are required to compose literature. Often, because this task is both exciting and challenging, the end result is some kind of an achievement that “most people feel pride in their work and want to be read” (Ur, 1996, as cited in Harmer, 2001). In 1998, Garfield-Vile describes this as “a journey of self-discovery and self-discovery promotes effective learning” (as cited in Harmer, 2001).
With this approach, students have all the chance and opportunity to be creative: expressing themselves through writing short stories and poetry. While they are at it, they are tapping into their own experiences to motivate them finding the right words to express such experiences.
Teachers who want students to explore their creative ability love this idea because this paves the way for students to discover their writing ability in the field of literature. However, there is always a danger that students may find writing creatively difficult. They would find it difficult simply because they might not have anything to write, which is a real painful and not-so-motivating experience. This could create in their minds an association of creative writing with the sense of frustration and failure. Thus, if a teacher really wants to implement this into the classroom, he should not expect too much or expect a perfectly made composition. Rather, he should introduce this kind of approach bit by bit to students that they won’t be traumatically surprised.

The Rhetorical Approach
In writing, students need to learn to subordinate the rhetorical tools to their creativity and self-expression. The fifth approach is rhetorical. When writing, many are influenced by rhetoric, which is the art of speaking. Rhetoric has its virtues, especially because it encourages awareness of an audience and recommends ways in which a speaker could keep attention focused on his main point. On the negative side, rhetoric can lead to less attention to reading and guide writers toward common places. The origin of rhetoric in cultures where books were rare and knowledge was all memorized explains why it does not insist on interpretation of text. The oral/aural orientation does not prevent the students, however, from adapting rhetoric to their cultural environment. Instead of resorting exclusively to what they remember, they can easily read and research in order to find support for his arguments. What rhetoricians call invention can be stimulated by reading and interpretation of texts (Rosu, n.d).
The structuring of writing is an important aspect of rhetoric, which sometimes falls into an exaggerated emphasis on the form at the expense of the content. The prescribed forms of rhetoric give the impression that writing an essay is like filling a vessel. This dominance of the form may seem constraining to some writers, who prefer to develop their own forms. The challenge, nevertheless, of fitting self-expression in a prescribed form can be exhilarating. A rhetorical approach balanced by attention to self-expression and to the process of invention based on research can work quite nicely.
There is another approach related to rhetoric, which is known as “rhetorical modes” (Rosu, n.d). This approach considers writing in its detailed operations, asking students to practice a mode (a description, a comparison, a narrative, an analysis, etc.) in a full essay. It also has positive and negative aspects and needs careful implementation. Students may learn to excel in a particular mode, but remain unable to integrate several modes in a more complex essay, and the purpose of their writing seems to be constrained by the form. Ignoring the fact that a piece of writing may result from a combination of several modes, students may be puzzled by writing tasks that do not lend themselves a particular mode. If students practice modes, they have to take care to integrate the skills and consider the way in which the separate operations contribute to the whole. They also need to emphasize their personal stakes as writers, and pursue the thought beyond the mode. Thus, students need to learn to subordinate the rhetorical tools to their creativity and self-expression.

The Personal Approach
More often than not, in a writing class, a teacher asks his students to write something about their lives, like their experiences and beliefs. This paves the way for the sixth approach presented in this paper which is personal. The main and basic reason why a teacher asks students to make personal essays is to develop self-reflection, self-awareness. That is why a teacher is chiefly valued for helping the students find their personal voices. When the emphasis on the personal goes too far, however, the balance tips in favor of self-indulgence, rather than self-reflection. This imbalance originates perhaps in confusing the personal with the private and confessional discourse.
As cited in Rosu (n.d), Harriet Malinowitz asserts that the personal essay, “doesn’t have to be—certainly should not be—self-indulgent or derivative of an Oprah-show confession, as some reflexively presume nor is it even necessarily about oneself; its essence is subjectivity, not autobiography.” It is really true, and it is also already proven (Rosu, n.d), that many students use the personal essay as a means to reveal social problems and debate cultural issues.
What can help students develop a more challenging self-reflective process is a thoughtful use of readings. Being inspired by the issues debated in the texts, students can then start exploring their personal experiences in new ways. From personal experience, they can progress to larger topics, in which they can invest attention and study, and become able to integrate academic knowledge in their personal preoccupations. The idea is to relate new concepts derived from reading to personal experience, without actually writing only for oneself. To be effective, a teacher must emphasize that although it is personal, personal essays should be reader-centered rather than writer-centered.
Developing self-reflection and awareness are two of the many things a student should learn in a writing class. That is why many teachers ask their students to write personal essays. However, inevitably students tend to be carried by their emotions while writing something personal, as the name seems to suggest. Thus, the end result is having an essay of forum of personal opinions rather than of personal voices. Students as writers must be aware that when they write, they have to conform to the standards set by community who are the possible readers of their work; and personal opinions simply do not adhere to such rules. Writing in schools spells writing scholarly or academically.

Scholarly/Academic Approach
Finally, the seventh and last approach discussed in this paper is academic. On top of the personal essays, a teacher also asks students to make academic essays to assert their own voices among others’. For those who emulate scholarly writing, the danger is to generate impersonal and unengaged essays. This happens when, uninitiated in the academic reasoning process, the students substitute academic parlance for actual thinking. For if the form of such essays is generally top-down, starting with a thesis and supporting it, it does not mean that the process of writing them follows the same path. On the contrary, the thesis is the final result of a lot of questioning, searching, and experimentation. Nor does such an essay need to claim the kind of total objectivity that translates into impersonal writing. Peter Elbow defines academic discourse as “giving reasons and evidence, yes, but doing so as a person speaking with acknowledged interests to others—whose interest and position one acknowledges and tries to understand” (as cited in Rosu, n.d). Academic thinking is exploratory in its main aspect and cultivates respect for other people’s work. It focuses on problems and looks for solutions.
If properly prepared, an academic essay has the virtue of fostering not only interpretation, but also original thinking. Engaged in interpretation of multiple texts and from various points of view, students can earn a position among other writers. They can also learn to assert their own voices among the voices of others. The best academic essays are engaged and personal, and they make complicated concepts clear and easy to understand for the layman.

Critical Perspectives on Second Language Writing
One further and important development in the teaching of writing is what is sometimes called a “critical perspective” on second language writing. A critical perspective on teaching writing, among other things, explores issues such as ideology, and identity, and how these are reflected in texts. This perspective goes beyond description and explanation of texts to “deconstructing” and, at times, even challenging texts. Classroom tasks and activities should aim to unpack ideologies, relationships, and identities so as to help students make choices in their writing that reflect who they are, and more importantly, who they want to be (Paltridge, 2004).

Academic Literacies Perspective on Second Language Writing
The academic literacies perspective, in the plural sense, sees learning to write as learning to acquire a repertoire of linguistic practices which are based on complex sets of discourses, identities, and values (Lea, 1994; Lea & Street, 1998; 1999; Starfield, 2004, as cited in Paltridge, 2004). Here, students learn to switch practices between one setting and another, learning to understand, as they go, why they are doing this, and what each position implies.
There is, sadly, no such thing as the one-size-fits-all academic essay that can be written in all areas of study (Johns, 1997 & Samraj, 2004, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) has observed. As Zamel and Spack, further, have argued, “it is no longer possible to assume that there is one type of literacy in the academy” (1998, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) and that there is one culture in the university whose norms and practices simply have to be learned in order for our students to have access to academic institutions.

Students as Researchers
Johns and Canagarajah (2002, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) recognize the difficulty this presents for the students by suggesting that a teacher can train his students to “act as researchers” (Johns, 1997, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) as a way of helping them write texts that consider the institutional and audience expectations of their particular fields of study. They argue that students can be trained to unpack the knowledge and skills that are necessary for membership of their particular academic community. A teacher should give them the skills to ask questions of the texts they are required to produce, of the context the texts are located in, and the people who will be reading (and evaluating) their work. Students may then decide to produce a text that fits in with these expectations, or they may write a text which challenges, or indeed resists, what is expected of them.

Ethnography of Writing
Grabe and Kaplan’s (1996, as cited in Paltridge, 2004) notion of an “ethnography of writing,” provides a useful way of drawing a number of these perspectives together. In the case of teaching academic writing, students can be asked to undertake an analysis of the social and cultural context in which the text they are writing occurs, and consider how the various components of the situation in which they are writing impacts upon what they write and how they write it.
The analysis might include a discussion of (adapted from Paltridge, 2004):
* The setting of the text - For example, is the text written in a high school, or a first year university course? Is it undergraduate or postgraduate?
* The purpose of the text - Is the purpose to display knowledge and understanding in a particular area, to demonstrate particular skills, to convince the reader, to argue a case, and at more advanced levels, to critique, and break new ground?
* The content of the text - For example, what points of view and claims are acceptable in the students’ area of study, and what points of view and claims are not, and why? What are they expected to say, and what are they not expected to say?
* The intended audience for the text, their role and purpose in reading the text – including how they will react to the text, and the criteria they will use for assessing the text.
* The relationship between the reader and writer of the text and how this impacts about what they say and how they say it. This is often one of the most difficult things for second language students in that they often have to write to tell someone something they already know (or know better than they do).
* General expectations and conventions for the text, as well as particular expectations, conventions and requirements of the student’s field of study - For example, how are they expected to reference in their area of study, how should they use source texts, how should they quote, how should they paraphrase (versus plagiarize), the level of critical analysis required (or not required) of them, the level of originality expected of them, and the amount of negotiation that is possible (or not) in terms of assessment requirements.
* The background knowledge, values, and understandings - it is assumed they will share with their readers, including what’s important to their readers and what’s not.
* The relationship the text has with other genres (such as lectures, set texts, journal articles, research reports etc) and how they will be used to support an argument. The teaching, thus, moves “beyond the text” to explore the context in which the texts are produced as well as reasons for the linguistic choices that the students are making. It is important to remember that the reasons for the linguistic choices a teacher makes are nearly always outside the text. Just looking at texts alone might give the students a description of a particular genre, but not an explanation or understanding of why it is as it is.

Recommendation
After the approaches and implications are discussed, this section now presents some recommendations to teachers. One thing that is not recommended to teachers is to mix approaches to writing in the same class. It is very difficult and disorienting for the students to learn to write in different genres within the short period of time of a semester, especially if they are not aware of the change from one type of essay to another. None of the approaches can teach the students to write in a single trial. Hence, what is recommended is writing four or five papers, which give the students similar tasks and help them perfect their techniques. Since the teacher’s purpose is to enable the students to tackle writing in other classes, he has to bring the students to a point where they will be able to do that, in whatever genre he has chosen to teach them. Whether the students learn to use the concepts from the readings to interpret their own experience, or to defend a thesis in a rhetorically effective manner, or to produce coherent interpretations, they will be able to approach any writing task with the skills they have acquired. The teacher should teach them that, irrespective of approach, all the essays they write must be personal, engaged, thoughtful, coherent, well formed, and capable to reach their audience.
A similar classification by genre of essays is to be found on the Website called Paradigm authored by Chuck Guilford. His list includes informal essays, thesis/support essays, exploratory essays, and argumentative essays. One point he makes about this division into genres is that they share characteristics, but one characteristic or another comes to dominate and defines the genre. The same holds true for the types of writing described above: No matter how a teacher approach writing, he aims at teaching the students to read attentively and interpret what they read—which means relating what they read to personal experience—to construct coherent wholes in their papers, and to consider the audience for whom they write.

Conclusion
The descriptions above apply to kinds or genres of essays that imply different approaches to writing. All these approaches to writing can lead to comparable results. The best samples of each are equally good and effective. What makes the approaches different is the road taken by the students, as the writers, to reach the final goal. How to help a student do his best depends on the approach to writing, and pedagogy may vary with the kind of writing a teacher wants to teach. There are a few things that all approaches have in common though. They all encourage the writers to be active readers and to appropriate the author position. They all respect the individuality of the writer and emphasize the importance of the audience.
It is important to tell the students what the qualities of good writing are, and how a teacher aims to reach them through his particular approach to writing. Too many times, students seem to think that every teacher appreciates a different kind of writing, and that they have to learn everything over again—that is damaging to them and to the teacher. On the contrary, if a teacher is aware of the other approaches, and he can see what their strengths and weaknesses are, he can help his students become better writers. He may want to identify the way the students have been taught to write and encourage them to use the skills they have acquired in new ways. Such encouragement may also teach them to transfer the writing skills from one type of course to another. They will then be as excited and merry as the five-year old Filipino boy who eagerly announced to his family and friends that he was able to write “I love you.”

References

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