PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROCESS APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING

 2 TEACHING
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION: ............................................................................................................................ 3
2. PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROCESS APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING: ........ 4
3. SALIENT FEATURES OF PROCESS APPROACH: .................................................................... 6
4. PROCESS APPROACH AND THE ROLE OF TEACHERS: ....................................................... 7
4.1 Generating Ideas ........................................................................................................................ 8
4.2 Focusing ..................................................................................................................................... 8
4.3 Structuring ................................................................................................................................. 8
4.4 Drafting ...................................................................................................................................... 9
4.5 Evaluating .................................................................................................................................. 9
4.6 Re-viewing ................................................................................................................................. 9
5. IMPLICATION OF PROCESS APPROACH ON THE CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: ...... 10
5.1 Implications on course content: .................................................................................................... 10
5.2 Implications on Class room Assignments: .................................................................................... 10
5.3 Implication on feedback mechanism: ........................................................................................... 11
5.4 Implications related to teacher-student involvement and evaluation: .......................................... 12
5.5 Implications related to L1 and L2 writers: .................................................................................... 13
6. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 14
7. REFERENCES: ............................................................................................................................... 15 
3 TEACHING
1. INTRODUCTION:
There has been a reasonable gradual shift in the approach of teaching writing in the
classroom from product approach – comprising grammar-translation, controlled-to-free,
paragraph pattern, grammar syntax organization approaches (mostly prevalent till early
1970’s) to communicative approach (mid 1970’s), process (late 1970’s - Early 1980’s),
English for Academic Purposes (Mid 1980’s) and Genre Approach (1990’s). However, there
are array of opinions, arguments and concerns over the fact that which style works best with
the students in developing their ability to express their ideas with freedom and at the same
time with correct composition and coherence. All these approaches focuses at different aspect
of English writing and requires relevant changes in the role of teachers and students, their
involvement in the class room, nature of exercises and in the feedback method. However,
they provide an English Language Trainer a flexibility to implement one or a combination of
more than one approach (James, 1993) considering the time, purpose, need, cultural milieu
and academic level of students and their proficiency in the English Language.
This piece of writing will not delve into different approaches of teaching writing in
the class room but is intended to explore the process approach of teaching writing, its
implications on the teaching methodology and class room management and possible ways
through which teachers might respond to assure that both the need of learners/students and
the objective of the course is met. 
4 TEACHING
2. PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROCESS APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH
WRITING:
The underline philosophy of the process approach is to provide students/learners the
ability to learn the processes that leads to the acceptable finished text or product together with
a degree of freedom of expression based on their own fluency of language. The quote
“process cannot be inferred from the product, any more than wheat can be inferred from
bread” (Murray, 1982:18) aptly describes the importance of this approach while teaching
English writing in the classroom. Before discussing the process approach further, a brief
account of the research that guided the attention of teachers on the process of writing would
be relevant here. The main influence on the development of process approach was the work
of two cognitive psychologists Flower and Hayes, who proposed a writing model based on
their research on L1 writers (Flower and Hayes, 1981) that became the basic tool for the
further research on the process