Second Language Reading & Writing Pedagogy (Q/A)

Writing is effective when all steps are used by the writers while they compose an essay and a great piece of writing moves towards communication.

1. One definition of writing is “the process whereby a person selects, develops, arranges, and expresses ideas in units of discourse.” Do you agree with this definition? Does it imply a particular orientation to teaching L2 writing? How would you define writing?

Yes, I strongly agree with this definition because the process approach to writing teaching emphasizes the writer as an independent producer of texts. Actually it implies a particular orientation to teaching L2 writing. The model of writing processes are mostly accepted by L2 writing teachers, which is known as the original planning-writing-reviewing framework. This was established by Flower and Hayes (Flower, 1989; Flower and Hayes, 1981). According to them, “Writing is a non-linear, exploratory, and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning.” (Zamel, 1983:165)

A process model of writing instruction to develop the abilities to carry out a writing task, and the stages of writing process are crucial. In fact, a significant number of writing teachers adopt the process orientation as the main focus of their courses and the approach has had a major impact on writing research and teaching, especially in North America.

In the first place, selection of topic is the most important part in this writing process. Generally topic is selected by the teacher and/or students.

Second, prewriting stage of writing process involves gathering ideas or brainstorming and collecting data. Teachers can help students in several ways like creating lists, note taking, outlining, and researching.

Third, composing stage which involves getting ideas down on paper, reading to discover more about the author and author’s style, and reminders from other texts.

Fourth, the response to draft is an important stage. In this stage, teacher/peers respond to ideas, organization, and style. Especially students begin writing, connecting, and developing different ideas.

Fifth, revising is the stage of writing that involves rewriting, reorganizing the style, adjusting to readers, and refining ideas. It emphasizes on examining sentence structure or grammar, word choice, voice, and everything.

Sixth, response to revisions is related with teacher/peers respond to ideas, organization, and style.

Seven, proofreading and editing stage involves in checking and correcting form, layout, evidence, etc. For example: spelling, grammar, usage of vocabulary, and punctuation.

Then, the evaluation stage of process approach of writing, whether teacher evaluates progress over the process, and the overall effectiveness of the writing.

After that, publishing is the going public stage, whether writing got published through class circulation or presentation, noticeboards, websites, etc.

Lastly, follow-up tasks to address the weaknesses. 

Finally, we can define writing as a way to express ourselves, to inform a reader, to persuade a reader, or to create a literary piece.

 2.  Look again at the sections on the Process and Genre approaches. How do you think each might answer these fundamental questions about teaching writing?

·         What is involved in the process of becoming a writer?

·         What are our criteria for good writing and how do we communicate these to learners?

·         How should teachers intervene in students’ writing?

The development of writing skill is complex. It begins from product-oriented approach to a process-oriented approach and also to genre approach. 

Moreover, there are six traits of writing which involve in the process of becoming a writer. These are ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions. The idea is related with the topic of story or the main message. Organization is the way how the story is written and organized. Particularly voice refers to what makes the story unique to the author. Have to make sure the sentences flow because the sentence fluency is important. Writers need to focus on conventions like spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Have to beware of using simple, complex, and compound sentences properly. As well as, avoiding common phrases is necessary; need to focus on vocabulary and it makes writing realistic for the genre.

However, the criteria of good writing are subject content, composing processes, textual forms, and the communication with readers. We write something to achieve some purpose, and the relation between writer and readers actually matters. Especially topic should be decided from the personal emotions and experiences, and must be relatable. 

We can communicate these to learners by introducing with some factual genres. In recount genre, we can reconstruct past experiences by retelling events in original sequence. In procedure genre, we should simply show how to processes or events are accomplished, and this is called ‘meta-cognitive awareness’. With description genre, we may give an account of imagined or factual events, and enough descriptive feedback. In report genre, we can try to present factual information about a class of things by classifying them and describing their characteristic. It can be interactive feedback. Sometimes it can be peer feedback which is more facilitated. Finally through the explanation genre, we can give reasons or logical statements to affairs and judgement also.

Actually a good teacher needs to be understanding to all learners equally. S/he must be fair, reasonable, and sensible at his/her pace. Teachers can help students to introduce with different genres and distinguish between them. Teachers can make them to write more effectively using proper structures. Mainly teachers should intervene in students’ writing by developing control of the genre. The teachers here can adopt an interventionist role, ensuring that students are able to understand and easily reproduce the rhetorical patterns, expressing the meanings.

 3. The process and genre approaches are often presented as polar extremes. Can you think of ways that they might be seen as complementary rather than as incompatible?

Many researchers have mentioned that the teachers should not only adopt just an approach all the time in the classroom. Combining these two approaches or sometimes more than two can be considered as a new way to teaching writing. This combination allows students to understand the relationship between purpose and 

form for a particular genre. As well as, it develops the processes of prewriting, drafting, revision, and editing.

However, both approaches complement each other, and additionally ensures that grammatical and vocabulary items are not taught in isolation. It is rather than taught in meaningful and interactive situations, derived from the particular genre.

Therefore, here practicing process approach and rewriting on different genre is so important.