Abstract
This study aimed at examining the probable impact of three distinct approaches to teaching writing, namely Process, Process-product and Product approaches on the rhetorical organization of EFL learners’ argumentative essays. To fulfill this aim, after ensuring the homogeneity of the 45 participants of the study through Oxford Placement Test (OPT) the learners who were all at the intermediate level of English proficiency were divided into three groups comprising of 15 learners, each receiving instruction for 6 sessions based on the aforementioned approaches. After teaching the basic structure of an argumentative essay, the students in each group were required to write an essay in each session. In the last session they were asked to produce an essay which was considered as their post-test. The rhetorical organization of their writings was analyzed using a rubric adopted from the study of Tsai (2006). Using SPSS 16, the results of One-way ANOVA at the alpha level of .05 revealed that there was a significant difference between those who wrote based on process approach and also process-product approach and those who were taught on the basis of product approach to writing. The pedagogical implications of the study are further discussed throughout the paper.
Highlights
Compared with other language skills, writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners
This study was an attempt to discover if any of the three approaches to teaching writing to EFL learners including Process approach, Process-product, and Product approaches has any impact on the rhetorical organization of the argumentative essays produced by the learners
It can be concluded from the analysis of the results via One-way ANOVA that learners who wrote on the basis of process approach while going through different stages of planning, drafting, revising, or editing and those learners who practiced writing via process-product approach to writing did better with regard to the rhetorical organization of their argumentative essays compared with those who were taught according to the traditional product approach, and our null hypothesis can be rejected
Summary
Compared with other language skills, writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners. Among the first proposed approaches to teaching writing has been “product approach” with its focus being mainly on grammatical and syntactic aspects of language with the primary aim of raising students’ awareness of text patterns and formal accuracy of a piece of writing (Tangpermpoon, 2008). This approach was mainly teacher-centered and treated the development of writing competence as the result of learning and utilizing formal knowledge of language (Jarunthawatchai, 2010). The product approach to writing instruction has been criticized as considering writing as a linear act and not taking into account the processes through which a text is generated, and giving little attention to audience and the purposes for which we write
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