Impacts of the implementation of the process genre approach to teaching writing on majored students writing at khanh hoa university a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the require

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the study

Writing is one of the four main language skills which learners need to possess
so as to be able to demonstrate their communicative competence in the use of English
language. It is considered as the most demanding task (Tribble, 1996; Zheng, 1999)
because it requires the application of the knowledge of the other three skills as well as
the linguistic and cognitive skills of the learners (Silva, 1990; Raimes, 1991). In fact,
Nunan (1999, p. 271) considers it an enormous challenge to produce “a coherent,
fluent, extended piece of writing” in one’s second language. Being competent in
writing is necessary not only for tertiary level learners to complete their assignments or
assessment tests at colleges or universities but also for their future work after
graduation.
Although writing skill is so difficult and important, in reality of teaching and
learning English in Vietnam for a long time, especially at high schools, teaching and
learning writing has not got much attention from teachers and investment from
learners. Practice listening, speaking, reading skill and language areas including
vocabulary, phonetics and grammar has been paid much more attention from the
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and students for exam-driven purposes.
Meanwhile, writing skill is mostly regarded as a consolidation practice of grammar,
vocabulary and structures they have learnt and “is frequently accepted as being the last
language skill to be acquired…for foreign/ second language learners” (Hamp-Lyons &
Heasley, 2006, p.2). These lead to the fact that most learners who have just graduated
from high schools and been admitted to colleges and universities, especially those left
high school before the school year of 2013-2014, have only got used to doing the
multiple-choice tests, which consist of sections on grammar, vocabulary, reading
comprehension and writing, with some kinds of tasks transformed from rewriting
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sentences in another way, using the suggested words and keeping the same meaning
with the original sentences; rearranging jumbled words or phrases into meaningful
sentences; making sentences using suggested words or giving the correct forms of
verbs in brackets to complete sentences (Hoang, 2007).
Those types of writing tasks given by high school teachers only aim at helping
the learners get good scores and pass the multiple-choice exams at schools, not
enabling them to improve their writing skill because they hardly have chances to write
their own paragraphs. Therefore, when they are asked to write a paragraph on their
own, they can hardly write a short complete paragraph about a familiar and easy topic
as they have not defined what the real purposes of their writing are, who their target
audiences are, in which contexts and what linguistic conventions of texts they have to
follow. They also meet difficulties in generating and organizing ideas, using an
appropriate selection of vocabulary and arranging such ideas into a completed coherent
text so that the readers find it easy to understand (Richard & Renandya, 2002). These
purely have shown the students’ limited ability in writing. Consequently, students
become unconfident, even discouraged in writing learning and develop a negative
attitude towards writing. As a consequence, even when becoming English majors in
colleges or universities, their writing ability is rather low.
English majors at Khanh Hoa University (former Nha Trang College of
Education) are not exception. Based on the results of the college entrance examination
of the school year 2013-2014 as well as students’ low college reports after two terms
of their first year at Khanh Hoa University from the source of the Training Department
of Khanh Hoa University, it can be inferred that their writing competence is not
improved much. It seems that writing instructions have not been employed
appropriately. Therefore, it has not made great impacts on their writing competence. In
the course syllabus of the school year 2013-2014 at Khanh Hoa University, listening
and speaking, reading and writing are taught as integrated skills. Reading and writing
skills are taught within 45 periods per semester, each of which lasts for 50 minutes,
and theoretically, writing accounts for half of that amount of time. It is rather timeconstraint for both teachers to present the lecture and students to have a chance to
practice writing. Besides, teachers of writing are in charge of large-size classes, over

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40 students. In order to have enough time for all the students to practice writing in
class and apply what they are taught, normally, teachers adopt the easy way by giving
lectures on how to write generally. What the teachers usually do in the classroom is
giving the writing tasks, analyzing the model of the writing type, introducing the main
structures, tenses and vocabulary used in this type of writing, then giving students 20
or 30 minutes to think and write about that topic. For the second-year students, they
are supposed to write reports on topics. What they have to do then are reading the
requirement of the writing task, brainstorming and writing following what is required.
Then, if there is enough time left, teachers can correct some students’ writing products
in class; otherwise, the teachers collect their papers and mark them at home (Hoang,
2007). These familiar steps of teaching writing in EFL classroom are obviously
product-based in which students are hoped to produce as few error-free writing
products as possible and the teachers care for only forms such as syntax and word
forms, not the meaning, the writing content (Hoang, 2007).
In other words, writing classes in most colleges and universities nowadays in
Vietnam, especially at Khanh Hoa University, have been quite product-oriented and
the written product is often evaluated mainly in terms of language knowledge (Tran,
2007). This “is greatly shaped by the grammar translation method that has dominated
the language teaching and learning reality in Vietnam for decades” (Pham, 2000, p.
21). Therefore, grammar points together with sentence structures have been important
factors in the teaching of writing in Vietnam. Moreover, writing has been conducted in
the classroom as an individual activity with the teacher as the only reader, and the
students are quite quiet (Tran, 2001). Consequently, this situation makes students feel
bored in writing sections. Compositions created seem artificial and do not serve the
purpose of plurality of real readers outside the classroom context.
From the practical aspect, there is an urgent need to utilize a different approach
on a combination of writing approaches in order to improve the students’ writing skills

and give them motivation in writing. Besides, all teachers in Khanh Hoa university
have been encouraged to apply the new appropriate teaching method into their
teaching career provided that all contents in the course syllabus are covered, teaching
objectives are gained and the outcomes are the same or better. From the theoretical
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perspective, a number of scholars in second language writing, such as Tribble, 1996;
Badger and White, 2000; Hyland, 2003b, have suggested the combination of the
process approach and the genre approach to teaching writing to students in second
language contexts. While the process approach deals with the process of writing,
encompassing four phases like prewriting, drafting, revising and rewriting; the genre
approach addresses the knowledge of social context and its effect on textual features
through three phases: (1) the target genre is modeled for the students, (2) a text is
jointly constructed by the teacher and students, and (3) a text is independently
constructed by individual student; writing in the genre approach is said to take place in
a social situation and reflect a particular purpose; it can occur consciously through
imitation and analysis, which facilitates explicit instruction. By exploring different
genres, students can master the differences in structures and forms in order to
implement what they learn on their own writing (Tribble, 1996; Badger and White,
2000; Hyland, 2003b). When implementing the process genre approach integrating
process and genre in writing, students are supposed to gain the necessary knowledge of
textual features, process of writing and social contexts; to enhance their positive
attitude towards writing and be willing to face any types of writing assignments at
colleges or universities or even at their work places in their future.
With a view to limiting obstacles that learners, especially the English majors at
Khanh Hoa University, encounter in learning to write English compositions, enhancing
their writing skills, mastering diverse types of texts and creating their positive attitude
and perceptions towards learning writing, the process genre approach to writing was
chosen to be applied in this study. It was hoped that after the treatment, students would

become more confident and compose effectively kinds of report writing they have
faced during the course.

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1.2 Background of the study
1.2.1 The learners’ background

Khanh Hoa University is a state university situated in Nha Trang city
which was jointly established in September, 2015 from two colleges, Nha Trang
College of Education and Nha Trang College of Tourism, Art and Culture. The
participants of this study were from the former Nha Trang College of Education,
whose main responsibility is to train teachers of all subjects for primary and junior
schools in Khanh Hoa province. In the last 10 years, it has been allowed to provide
three-year bachelor courses in Culture and Tourism, English and Social work. The
participants in this study were the second-year English majors of the Foreign
Languages Department. Most of the students had just graduated from high schools in
Nha Trang suburbs, some from other provinces like Phu Yen, Quang Binh, Quang
Tri... and few from Nha Trang city center. According to the data in a survey conducted
at the beginning of the school year 2013-2014 by the researcher, 100% of the students
from the two second-year English-majored classes who took part in the research had
learnt English for seven years, from grade six at their junior schools to grade twelve at
their high schools before they took this course. In addition, basing on the results of the
college entrance examination of the school year 2013-2014 from the source of the
Training Department of Khanh Hoa University, these students were selected to the
college with rather modest standard scores, in which the scores they had of
mathematics or literature were usually much higher than that of English, their learning
major for their three years at college. It can be inferred that they were usually of the
same low level of English proficiency. They then were arranged into the same classes

with the same teaching method and the same syllabus as well.
As mentioned above, basing on the results from the Training Department
of Khanh Hoa University, after the first two semesters at Khanh Hoa University, their
writing skill has not been improved much. According to the data in a survey conducted
at the beginning of the school year 2013-2014 by the researcher, there were a variety
of reasons resulting in their poor results. Few learners had ability to self-study while
5


most of them were still shy, passive and dependent. Their learning goal seemed just to
pass the final tests, so they rarely made use of all resources of materials introduced by
the teachers let alone search for other new sources of materials relating to their major.
Relating to their learning style, students faced a lot of difficulties in
learning writing because of their limited vocabulary and structures as well as lack of
ability in generating and organizing ideas to create an appropriate and complete text.
When they were asked to write a paragraph about one topic, they were not confident to
write on their own; they needed the support from their dictionary and their phone
assessing to the Internet. Some relied on what Google translated and could not correct
mistakes themselves because they could not distinguish which words or phrases to be
used in which appropriate context. The survey also showed that students were
dependent on what had been suggested and analyzed in the outline by the teacher, lazy
in thinking, poor in generating ideas and not creative.

1.2.2 The teaching staff

There are 37 teachers in all in the teaching staff of the Foreign Languages
Department at Khanh Hoa University, including 21 teachers of English, four teachers
of French, two teachers of Russian, two Korean, three Japanese, and five teachers of
Chinese. The teachers of English, aged from 26 to 54, two got PhD degrees, most had
formal tertiary training and got MA degrees in TESOL, three taking PhD courses, and

three others taking MA courses in English. All of them are enthusiastic, devoted and
committed to their teaching profession.

1.2.3 Teaching and learning English writing at Khanh Hoa University

In the detailed plan of the third term in the writing subject of the school
year 2014-2015 at Khanh Hoa University, teachers are supposed to apply the process
approach for second-year English majors, with the following order: prewriting (topic
analysis), planning outline, drafting, revising and rewriting. In this approach, students
are required to brainstorm their ideas, plan their own outlines, draft, revise and rewrite
6


own their own. However, in reality, due to the fact that learners’ language proficiency
level is rather low, students have often had difficulties in producing a paragraph on
their own without looking at a model for reference; therefore, with the hope of
enabling students to be able to easily complete their writing tasks with as few errors as
possible, teachers in charge of teaching writing in the classes in their third term, with
the support from the Head of Languages Department, highly agreed to mainly apply
the product approach with only one piece of writing, no draft. The writing task is
given, suggested and analyzed by the teacher and students; some main structures are
introduced, relevant tenses and vocabulary used are also mentioned. Students have a
short time to think and complete the writing task. They are required to make a
complete product at the first time. If there is enough time, some of their writing tasks
are marked and analyzed in class. Some good writings chosen will be written on the
board to be analyzed for reference. Most of the writings left will be collected to be
corrected and given scores by teachers at home.

1.2.4 Materials

In the syllabus of the course 2013-2016 for English majored students at college
level of Khanh Hoa University, writing is taught in five semesters out of six semesters
of the whole course. The aims of the whole writing course are to enable students to
master not only the ways to write sentences, paragraphs and essays, even academic
writing but the characteristics and requirements of writing types as well; and, most
important, give students chances to practice writing all types of writing planned in the
course in order to help them express their critical thinking and be ready to encounter
with different types of writing in their future. In particular, in the first term, students
are asked to practice writing paragraphs about personal information, a place, a habit,
giving instructions and writing a biography. In the second semester, mastering how to
write paragraphs of a description, a narrative, an invitation letter and a business letter
is required. In their third semester, the course aims at writing small advertisements, as
well as writing assessment reports and descriptive chart and graph reports. In the
fourth semester, writing essays to give an opinion about some certain topics is
7


practiced a lot. In the last term of their writing course, students are required to master
structures of an essay, know how to outline an essay, write an essay with unity and
coherence, and be able to write various kinds of essays like comparison and contrast
essays, classification essays and cause and effect essays.
This study was carried out during their third term of their course. The main
content of the writing course in the third term is writing reports. In fact, report writing
is an essential skill for professionals in almost every field: accountants, teachers,
graphic designers, information scientists, etc. It is also one of extremely necessary
skills for English Bachelor students who would like to be professional workers serving
in tourism in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province in the near future. It is this reason
that is one of the reasons why writing reports is one of the main requirements in the
integrated course of Reading and Writing for the second-year English majors at Khanh
Hoa University.

In terms of materials employed in the writing course in the third semester,
lessons on writing small advertisements and reports are extracted from following
books, including Visual writing about graphs, tables and diagrams by Duigu (2006),
Outlines by Hopkins and Tribble (1990), and Cambridge IELTS Practice Tests by
Griffiths (2015).
All writing classes follow the same content, same assignments and same rating
criteria. In the Reading and Writing course for the second-year English majors, writing
accounts for 50 per cent of the total of the course; however, in reality, in detailed plan
of the course, in their third semester, reading is planned to be taught in four weeks of
15 weeks in all. One week is for mid-term test, one week for correction and revision
and the rest of time (nine weeks) is for writing. Out of nine weeks, one week is for
writing advertisements, the first four weeks are for writing assessment reports and the
following four weeks for writing descriptive chart and graph reports. Reading and
writing are instructed interleavedly. There are three 50-minute periods in each week.
All students’ writings are rated basing on the criteria suggested by Foreign Languages
Department. Particularly, content aspect (ideas) accounts for 3.5 points; language
accuracy: 3.5 points, and coherence: 3 points, respectively.
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1.3 Objectives of the study

This research aims to investigate the impacts of the process genre approach on
students’ writing. In detail, the impacts are considered related to, firstly, how the
implementation of the process genre approach to writing affects the second-year
English-majored students’ report writing performance and secondly, their attitudes
towards learning writing.

1.4 Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives of the study stated above, the following two
research questions are explored:
1. To what extent does the application of the process genre approach affect the
second-year students’ English report writing performance?
2. What are students’ attitudes towards learning writing through the application
of the process genre approach?

1.5 Significance of the study

Although the process genre approach to teaching writing has been suggested for
a long time, it seems not to be implemented much in teaching writing in colleges and
universities in Vietnam. This research is an endeavor to find out to what extent the
process genre approach to teaching writing influences on both students’ writing,
especially their report writing competence, and their attitudes towards learning English
writing so as to try to convince English teachers to utilize this method in their own
teaching contexts with the aims of enhancing students’ awareness of characteristics of
genres of writing, improving their writing proficiency and building up students’
motivation, confidence and positive perceptions towards learning this skill as well.

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1.6 Scope of the study

This study mainly focused on second-year English majors at Khanh Hoa
University. The time this study was carried out was eight weeks in the first semester of
their second school year, in which only report writing was taught. Two types of
information reports, including assessment reports and descriptive graph and chart
reports, were investigated as they were the two types to be taught in the course
syllabus of the university.

1.7 Organization of the study

The study consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction of the
study, consisting of its rationale, background, then the objectives of the research,
research questions, its significance, its scope and lastly the organization of the study.
Chapter 2 reviews the concept of writing skill, its characteristics, components of a
good piece of writing, types of writing, especially information reports, approaches to
teaching and learning English writing, namely product approach, process approach,
genre approach and process genre approach to establish grounds for the conceptual
framework of the study. Besides, writing rubrics, the concept of attitude and previous
studies on the implementation of the process genre approach to teaching writing are
also taken into account. Research design, description of research site, research
participants, pre-test results, experiment operation, instruments of data collection, and
data analysis are considered in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 supplies data analysis
methodology as well as analysis and discussion of tests and questionnaire from the
experiment. Chapter 5 presents the conclusions, recommendations, limitations of this
current study as well as suggestions for further study.

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Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter introduces the basic of writing skill; its characteristics; components
of a good piece of writing; types of writing, especially report writing implemented in
this study and how to teach and learn writing. Rubrics for rating writing products,
attitude concept as well as previous studies are also taken into consideration.

2.1 Writing and its characteristics

There have been a variety of definitions of writing so far. Raimes (1983) states
that writing is an important skill that all learners of a language need to develop because
it not only is a means to reinforce grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary
taught but also allows for communication through the use of the language in a
necessary way, making efforts to express ideas through the constant use of eye, hand
and brain. Later, writing is defined as a demanding task, as writers are required to
incorporate a range of knowledge, including content, context, language system and
writing process when they produce text (Tribble, 1996). And most typically, according
to Archibald and Jeffery (2000), writing is a complex activity in which writers requires
knowledge of textual features, the writing process and the content to produce
successful texts.
In terms of characteristics of writing, like speech, writing has been considered a
powerful mode of communication. Both speech and writing utilize words, phrases and
sentences to make conversations be understood by listeners and readers. However,
unlike speech, writing is not for the audience present, the context is created through the
words alone and without the direct interaction between the writer and the reader.
Therefore, it is necessary for writers to form clear and comprehensive messages so that
the readers can comprehend what has been written without asking for clarification
11


(Nunan, 1999). Moreover, writing should be learned and organized through the
understanding of writing as cognitive and social activity; writers produce a text not
only to express their own ideas or meanings but also to achieve social purposes in a
certain context. Writers go through a complex process of composing to discover the
meaning they wish to express, and need to be aware that their ideas need to be
transformed into text with specific rhetorical and linguistic features aimed at achieving
communication with participants in that particular social situation.

2.2 Components of a good piece of writing

Raimes (1983, cited in Wong, 2011) indicates that in order to produce a good
piece of writing, writers need to pay attention to at least nine factors, such as content,
syntax, grammar, mechanics, organization, word choice, purpose, audience, and
process of writing. Content of a good text needs to be relevant, clear, original, and
logical. Syntax focusing on sentence structure, sentence boundaries, stylistic choices,
etc; grammar related to rules of verbs, subject-verb agreement, articles, pronouns, etc.;
and mechanics including handwriting, spelling and punctuation all must be utilized
appropriately. Writing goes through a process including the phases of getting ideas,
getting started, writing drafts and revising to generate and organize ideas. Organization
of a writing pays attention to how to produce paragraphs, how to write topic sentences
and supporting sentences and make sure its cohesion and unity. Word choice is
concerned with the choice of vocabulary, idioms and tone used in a piece of writing. In
addition, a meaningful communicative writing also requires defining clearly who the
real readers of the writing are and what its purpose is. All of these components need
exploring to create an effective communicative writing product.
Besides, according to Peha (2003), an effective writing needs six qualities.
First, content of the text, or in other words, the ideas, should be important and
interesting. The ideas, what the writer is writing about and the information he/ she
chooses to write about, are the core of the text. Second, organization of the text, which
refers to the order of ideas and the way the writer moves from one idea to the next,
needs to be logical and effective. The third quality is individual and appropriate voice
12


of the writing. Voice is the expression of the writer’s personality through words.
Readers feel voice of a text when they read it to find whether it is formal or casual, it is
friendly and inviting or reserved and standoffish, etc. Fourth, a good piece of writing

needs specific and memorable word choice. Good writing uses just the right words to
say the right things. Next is the fluency of sentences as well as that of the writing.
Sentences need to be really smooth and expressive. Fluent sentences are easy for
readers to understand and fun to read with expression. Last but not least, it is
conventions that are the rules to use punctuation, spelling, grammar, and other things
that make writing consistent and easy to read. They are required to be correct and
communicative.
In brief, as can be seen, both definitions about a good piece of writing from two
researchers, Raimes (1983) and Peha (2003) have five things in common. They are (1)
content, (2) organization, (3) vocabulary, (4) language use/ grammar and (5)
mechanics of writing, all of which are the important components creating a meaningful
and effective piece of work. Students are required to have good knowledge of
linguistic, psychological and cognitive matters; master the basic system of a language,
including knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, formatting, punctuation and
sentence structures as well as have good awareness of types of writing to enhance their
writing performance.

2.3 Types of writing

The social purposes of the text-genres in turn decide the linguistic inputs of the
text, including their linguistic conventions, often in form of schematic structure and
linguistic features. In terms of social purposes in writing, most typically, Derewianka
(1990) states that there are six main genres including: (1) narratives: to tell a story,
usually to entertain; (2) recount: to tell what happened; (3) information reports: to
provide factual information; (4): instruction: to tell the listeners or readers what to do;
(5) explanation: to explain why or how something happens; (6) expository texts: to
present or argue a viewpoint. Of all these types of writing, basing on the writing
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course syllabus of Khanh Hoa University, information report writing, which is the
main content of the writing course in the third term, is taken into account in this study.

2.4 Information reports

2.4.1 Definition and types of reports

Several definitions of reports are taken into account. Virginia (1998, p.120)
states that “a report is an informative formal piece of writing concerning a particular
person, place, situation, plan, etc; it is addressed to one’s superior/colleagues, members
of a committee, etc, and is written in response to a request or instruction”. According
to Oxford English Dictionary, a report is a statement of the results of an investigation
or of any matter on which definite information is required. A report is a factual text
which provides information about what is or what has happened. Reports can be
written about a range of things - natural, cultural and social - in our environment. They
may contain accounts and descriptions, but they often do more than describe a thing,
event or situation. Some reports state a problem and suggest a solution. Some argue a
case for or against a particular option, supporting their case with evidence and making
a recommendation (University Centre Grimsby, n.d).
Different researchers give different categories of types of reports. According to
Galko (2001), there are seven kinds of reports at work, consisting of (1) meeting
minutes: summarize what was discussed at a meeting; (2) status reports: tell the
current progress made on a certain project; (3) travel reports: describe the different
aspects of a business trip; (4) expense reports: list the expenses incurred on a business
trip; (5) accident reports: describe an incident; (6) performance appraisals: evaluate
an employee’s performance over a period of time and (7) competitive analysis:
compares your company’s products with similar products put out by competitors.
However, more generally, Virginia (1998) states that there are four various types of
reports, such as: (1) assessment reports which present, evaluate the positive and/or
negative features of a person, place, plan, etc; and also include writer’s opinion and/or

recommendation; (2) informative reports which present information concerning a
14


meeting that has taken place, progress made on a project, etc.; (3) survey reports which
present and analyze information gathered from door-to-door surveys/ questionnaires,
including

conclusions

drawn

from

this

information

and

suggestions

or

recommendations; and (4) proposal reports which present plans, decisions or
suggestions concerning possible future courses of action for approval by one’s superior
at work, a bank manager, members of a committee, etc. In addition, in documents of
Lithgow high school (n. d.), there are eight different kinds of reports, namely:
information report, journal entry, news report, review, timetable, graph or table,
observation and commentary. Regardless of any classifications, basing on the course

syllabus, both assessment reports and descriptive graph and chart reports belong to
the genre of writing reports which are mainly mentioned in this research.

2.4.2 Characteristics of report writing

There are several typical characteristics in report writing. The purpose of a
report is to describe and classify factual information; therefore, a sequence of facts is
logically stated in a report without any personal involvement, and varies in their
purpose, but all of them require a formal structure and careful planning, presenting the
material in a logical, objective manner and employing factual, free of opinion, clear
and concise language. A report should be an orderly and objective communication of
facts aimed at a particular reader for a specific purpose. It must be well organized with
one part logically following or explaining another part. Therefore, it can be clearly
seen that a well-written and effective report must be as accurate, factual, clear and
complete as possible in itself and easy to read (University Centre Grimsby, n.d).
According to documents of University Centre Grimsby (n.d), a logical structure
of a successful report usually encompasses three main parts: introduction, body and
conclusion. In the introduction part, an opening statement must be supplied. Students
are asked to provide a context for the report by giving enough background information,
state the purpose of the report and clarify the key terms and indicate the scope of the
report. These key terms of reference are a guiding statement used to define what
students have been asked to find out, or, in other words, what the report will cover.
15


Students must be clear from the beginning what they are being asked to do. Besides, it
is necessary for students to give the procedure of writing reports showing how they
found out the information. In the second part, the body, the relevant information is
presented in details under suitable subheadings; students need to describe the most
important trends, select and present the findings explaining what they found out or a

series of facts about various aspects of the subject which are grouped into paragraphs,
and each paragraph has a topic sentence; diagrams, photographs, illustrations and maps
used to enhance the text. In the last part, the conclusion, students are required to sum
up the main points of the report. The conclusion should clearly relate to the objectives
of the report. Moreover, recommendations which are suggestions for future action are
also needed in this part. Students should show what they think should be done. All
suggestions given must be logically derived from the body of the report.
In academia, there is some overlap between reports and essays, and the two
words are sometimes used interchangeably, but reports are more likely to be needed
for business, scientific and technical subjects, and in the workplace. An essay presents
arguments and reasoning whereas a report concentrates on facts. Basically, a report is a
short, sharp, and concise document which is written for a particular purpose and
intended audience. Therefore, whenever writing a report, writers must bear in mind
why the report is written and who it is being written for. It generally sets out and
analyses a situation or problem, often making recommendations for future action. It is
a factual paper, and needs to be clear and well-structured; therefore, it is a more highly
structured form of writing than an essay, and is designed so that it can be read quickly
and accurately without reading from beginning to end (University Centre Grimsby,
n.d).

2.5 Approaches to teaching and learning writing

Four popular approaches to teaching writing, namely, the product approach, the
process approach, the genre approach and the process genre approach, will be taken
into account in turns in this section. First of all, the product approach is mentioned
because it has been mainly employed in the reality of teaching writing for English
16


majored students at College level at Khanh Hoa University, normally, students felt

unmotivated and they lacked the ability to vary or create the contents. The second
approach taken into consideration is the process approach, which is not only the one
that, in documents, teachers are supposed to apply in teaching writing at English
classes but also an integral part in the integration of the process genre approach. The
third is the genre approach, one of popular approaches that have commonly been
implemented in most English writing classes nowadays, which is combined with the
process approach to create the process genre approach. The last one mentioned is the
process genre approach which is mainly employed in this study. It can be inferred that
the process and the genre approaches are the ones taken consideration in this study
only to help understand the new approach, the process genre approach better. Only the
product and the process genre are two main approaches applied to make comparison in
this study.

2.5.1 The product approach

2.5.1.1 Its definitions and characteristics

A few decades ago, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the product approach
dominated in teaching and learning writing. The product approach has been called by
several names: the control-to-free approach, the text-based approach, and the guided
composition (Raimes, 1983; Silva, 1990). Gabrielatos (2002, p.5) claims that the
product approach is “a traditional approach in which students are encouraged to mimic
a model text, usually is presented and analyzed at an early stage”. During the product
approach-based class, teachers focus on what a final piece of writing will look like and
measure it against criteria of “vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical
considerations such as spelling and punctuation,” as well as “content and organization”
of a piece of writing (Brown, 1994, p. 320).

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2.5.1.2

How to implement the product approach

In a typical product approach-oriented classroom, learners are provided with a
standard sample of text and they construct a new piece of writing (Hasan & Akhand,
2010). Particularly, this product approach consisting of four phases is outlined below:
familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing (Pincas, 1982;
Steele, 2004). In the familiarization stage, model texts are presented by the teacher and
read by the students, and then features of the genre are analyzed and highlighted. The
familiarization aims at making learners aware of vocabulary and grammatical features
of a model text. In the controlled and guided writing sections, students practice writing
with freedom increasingly until they are ready to write on their own in the free writing
part, using their knowledge to build their text independently (Badger & White, 2000).
Learners are supplied with relevant knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and structures
of a particular type of writing via a model text analyzed by the teachers. Ideas are
organized. In the free writing phase, students use the skills, structures and vocabulary
they have been taught to produce their own product in order to show what they can do
as fluent and competent users of the language.
In sum, according to Lam (2013), who adapted Robinson (1998), this approach
usually involves the presentation of a model text which is analyzed and the basic of a
task that leads to the writing of an exactly similar text. It can be introduced in the
following figure:
Figure 2.1: Model of the product approach (Lam, 2013)

Model text

comprehension/ analysis/ manipulation

NEW INPUT

PARALLEL TEXT

2.5.1.3 Its advantages and disadvantages

According to Zamel, 1982, Brown, 1994, and Yan, 2005, the product approach
brings about the following advantages. First, students are provided with enough
knowledge of grammar and vocabulary through a model text supplied and analyzed by
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the teachers. Students have chances to practice not only writing a good sentence but
also combining good sentences into a paragraph and connecting paragraphs into a good
essay. Obviously, this approach enables students, especially the ones at a lower level
of language proficiency, rather, beginners, not to worry about writing task and be able
to create their own error-free writing product for their exam-driven purpose with
confidence.
Second, this approach also helps instructors raise students’ L2 writing
awareness, because the basic knowledge of writing, especially in grammatical
structures, word choices, how to vary the content and how to organize the writing are
taught by the teacher. It is owing to these strengths that the product approach to writing
has been applied popularly in the writing classes, particularly for beginners, at high
schools, colleges and universities in Vietnam.
However, apart from those strengths, this approach has weaknesses. Firstly, the
actual writing processes used by students, or any writers, to produce a piece of writing
are ignored in this product approach (Brown, 1994). Students are not introduced about
knowledge of the process of producing a piece of writing, how the content of the text
is explored, where ideas come from, how they are formulated and developed, or what
the various stages of composing entail. Instead, they are asked to concentrate on

imitation of the model text given and analyzed by the teacher and producing a similar
free-error piece of writing, which very few people can create a perfect product on the
first draft.
Secondly, writing with this approach gives little or even no attention to
audience and the writing purpose. Zamel (1982, p.195) states that “the whole notion of
why and for whom student writers are writing is not taken into account on the productbased approach”. It also neither effectively provides students with the real contexts of
writing nor teaches them to write better (Yan, 2005). They give a problematic
assumption is that producing a piece of writing is for the teachers to evaluate, not for
the writers and the readers in the real world to communicate and negotiate meaning
(Nunan, 2000). This also hinders students from feeling of motivation and interest in
writing.
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Thirdly, this approach requires constant error correction, and that also affects
students’ motivation and self-esteem (Yan, 2005). Writer students only focus on
imitating the model text and avoiding making mistakes of grammar, syntax and
mechanics, which makes writer students have high pressure in creating their writings
with accuracy of the language structures and prevents them from comfort and
inspiration to write. They are not encouraged to be creative even though writing is a
productive skill, which need their creativity to enable them to express their thoughts
and ideas in words effectively in order to communicate successfully with the readers.
If they have no chance to be creative in writing activities, real writing seems not to
occur, rather, only stereotyping. Therefore, students easily feel discouraged and lose
interest and motivation in writing activities.
In order to overcome these weaknesses, the researcher as well as the teachers
teaching writing in Khanh Hoa University tries to analyze the content of the model text
as well as the writing task to help students define the purpose of writing and at the end
of the session, ask them to exchange their writing products with each other for
correction if there is enough time left. This enables students to enhance their awareness

of the readers, and more important, they can create complete meaningful writings.

2.5.2 The process approach

2.5.2.1 Its definitions and characteristics

In the late 1960s and in the early 1970s, the process approach appeared and
overwhelmed the traditional product approach which emphasizes the form of writing
(Susser, 1994; Tribble, 1996). Steele (1992) defines the process approach as focusing
more on the varied classroom activities which promote the development of language
use; brainstorming, group discussion and rewriting. The process approach focuses on
the steps involved in creating a piece of writing and a writer can make a piece of
writing more and more perfect by producing, reflecting on, discussing and reworking
successive drafts of a text as no text can be perfect at the first time (Nunan, 1991). The
process approaches have a major impact on understanding the nature of writing and the
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way writing is taught (Hyland, 2003b). The process approach pays attention to the
writer as “language learner and creator of text” and focuses on “process,” “making
meaning,” “invention,” and “multiple drafts” (Raimes, 1991, p.409).
Of a variety of different process approaches to writing, such as Hedge (1988),
White and Arndt (1991), Tribble (1996), Harmer (2006), the most typical writing
process model is from Tribble (1996). This typical model focuses more on four phases
in writing, consisting of prewriting, composing or drafting, revising and editing
(Tribble, 1996). In fact, these phases are not linear at all but rather recursive (Raimes,
1991), and they can interact with each other throughout the writing process. That
means while students are in the revising phase, they can return to the prewriting
activities to refine or add more new ideas. They can receive a lot of feedback from
their peers and their teacher and produce many drafts with much crossing out of

sentences and moving around of paragraphs. The correction of spelling and
punctuation is not of central importance at the early stages. The following diagram is
presented to illustrate the recursive and unpredictable process of writing (see Figure
2.3 below).
Figure 2.2: Dynamic and unpredictable model of process writing (Tribble, 1996)
PRE WRITING

COMPOSING/
DRAFTING

REVISING

EDITING

PUBLISHING
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2.5.2.2 How to implement the process approach

During the first phase of the process writing approach, the prewriting phase, a
global outline for their writing is made, ideas are generated and gathered through
brainstorming and discussion. The students are advised to always keep in mind the
intended readers and content of the text. They are free to discuss to produce ideas and
be provided language support if requiring (Tribble, 1996). In the process writing
approach, this prewriting stage is one of the most essential writing processes because it
affects all of the writing processes. Although prewriting activities are done before
actual writing, students can revisit this stage at any time.
Next, in the drafting phase, students will write a rough outline of what will be
addressed, extend ideas into note form, and judge quality and usefulness of ideas.

Students concentrate on getting ideas on paper, focusing on more global issues like
topic, organization and evidence without worrying about surface problems of
grammatical and mechanical errors, such as spelling, punctuation and wordiness
because the surface problems can be dealt with in subsequent drafts. They organize
ideas into a mind map, spider gram, or linear form and decide how to organize the text
in order to convey meaning effectively (Tribble, 1996, p.107). The first drafts are
written in class and frequently in pairs or groups and shared peers or their teacher to
receive comments for the final draft.
In the revising phase, drafts are exchanged, students become the readers of each
other's work and they, as readers, increase an awareness of the fact that a writer is
producing something to be read by someone else, and thus can improve their own
drafts. They reread their first drafts, look at their writing from a different point of view
and focus on developing the content and organizing the ideas of the whole text, not
minor grammar errors because “revision is not just polishing writing; it is meeting the
needs of readers through adding, substituting, deleting, and rearrange material”
(Tompkins, 1990, p.83). They revise their writing, using feedback from peers and the
teacher as well, focusing on content of writing and comment on improving coherence
and organization of writing. In this approach, whenever students may come up with
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some interesting ideas, they also can add those ideas, go back to the pre-writing and
continue to compose, revise their drafts.
The editing phase focuses mainly on “putting the piece of writing into its final
form” (Tompkins, 1990, p.88). Drafts are returned to be modified and improved basing
on the feedback from their peers or a teacher. Grammatical as well as mechanical
errors like spelling or punctuation are edited and corrected in this last stage to provide
a final draft.

2.5.2.3 Its advantages and disadvantages

This process approach to writing is appreciated owing to its advantages as the
following. First, this approach mainly focuses on the process of writing and skills of
writing. It helps students gain explicit knowledge of the process writing, and draws
their attention to the roles of skills involved in writing. Particularly, it increases
students’ awareness of the process of writing, enables students to master the stages in
writing and provides students skills involved in writing and time to practice them. It is
owing to the procedures of process writing that help students develop effective ways of
conveying meaning and better comprehend the content they want to express (Kim,
2007). Second, in the process approach, students have a chance to contribute their own
knowledge to their writing to improve their writing skill. What students bring to the
classroom contributes to the development of their writing ability. In other words, this
approach emphasizes meaning or content of the writing text. It can be clearly seen that
the topic and process of writing are closely connected, which gives students something
interesting to write about and the tools to finish it. Therefore, the result of students’
writing will be improved. Third, it focuses on the audience in writing and encourages
students to interact with each other in peer response activities.
Despite the meaningfulness the process approach brings to students, it has some
shortcomings. Firstly, it does not focus much on the social contexts and purpose of
writing texts. From a genre perspective, writers should not only write to express their
ideas but also write different texts to achieve different purposes in different social
contexts (Halliday & Hasan, 1989), and these social factors are key aspects in
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determining the lexico-grammatical features that the writers use (Kress, 1993). In fact,
the process approaches give insufficient importance to the kinds of texts writers
produce and why of texts are produced. It seems to narrowly focus on the skills and
processes of writing in the classroom itself and as a result fails to take into account the
social and cultural aspects that have an impact on different kinds of writing (Atkinson,

2003). As can be seen, process approaches fail to let students understand why certain
linguistic and rhetorical choices are made on their writing (Hyland, 2003a).
Secondly, the process approach fails to provide students with explicit
knowledge of the formal language features used in writing the texts. The writers are
provided with “little systematic understanding of the ways language is patterned in
particular domains” (Hyland, 2003a, p.18, 19), so they have to discover the meaning of
what they want to say. This inductive view of learning advantages L1 students, who
are familiar with cultural norms and the texts they are required to write, but not L2
learners. It is difficult for L2 learners to access this cultural resource because of their
lack of knowledge (Hyland, 2003a). Thus, they are forced to draw on discourse
conventions of their own cultures, and they may fail to reproduce L2 texts that are
contextually and educationally appropriate.
Thirdly, it takes time to implement this process approach in EFL classroom.
Hedge (2000, p.10) argues that it is difficult to use this approach because although the
process approach allows students to write and revise the drafts, they have to finish
writing in a limited-time exam. The multiple draft approach is not suitable for limitedtime exam. Furthermore, giving feedback on multiple drafts is time-consuming,
particularly in EFL context where writing classes are often large in number.

2.5.3 The genre approach

2.5.3.1 Its definitions and characteristics

The genre approaches emerged in the 1980s and quickly became popular. They
are strongly similar to the product approaches, and in some ways, genre approaches
can be considered as an extension of product approaches (Badger & White, 2000).
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Both genre approaches and product approaches pay much attention to linguistics and
final products; however, the genre approaches mainly focus on the social context in

which writing is produced, whereas product approaches do not. Genre, according to
Swales (1990, p.58), is “a class of communicative events, the members of which share
some set of communicative purposes”. In other words, the genres which share the
same communicative purposes belong to the same text-types. Therefore, writing in the
genre approach is deduced to take place in a social situation and reflect a particular
social purpose; it can occur consciously through imitation and analysis, which
facilitates explicit instruction (Badger & White, 2000).
There are some basic characteristics of the genre approach. First, the social
contexts of a text influence the forms, rhetorical structures, grammatical and lexical
features of the text, such as narratives, recount, information reports, instruction,
explanation and expository texts. This means that the context in which genre is being
produced affects the writers’ choice of language as different discourses require
different structures to reflect a particular purpose of each type of text. Thus, to produce
an effective writing achieving purposes of communication in a social context, student
writers need to be aware of the appropriate use of choices of form, rhetorical
structures, and linguistic features. Second, in the genre approach, besides the linguistic
conventions that need following in a text, the role of readers is more highly
appreciated than the role of writers as “any students who want to be successful in
communicating in a particular English-language discourse community needs to be able
to produce texts which fulfill the expectation of the readers in regards to grammar,
organization, and content” (Luu, 2011, p.123).

2.5.3.2 How to implement the genre approach
In terms of writing development, “genre approaches are very closely similar to
product approaches” (Badger & White, 2000, p.155). Hammond (1992, as cited in
Burns, 2001, p.202) proposed “a wheel model of a teaching learning cycle having three
phases: modeling, joint negotiation of text by learners and teacher, and the independent
construction of texts by learners”. In the first phase, modeling, the target genre which
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