Genre and Product Writing

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A process genre approach to

teaching writing

Richard Badger and Goodith White

This paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of product, process,

and genre approaches to writing in terms of their view of writing and how

they see the development of writing. It argues that the three approaches

are complementary, and identifies an approach which is informed by each

of them.

Introduction In 1982 one commentator on the teaching of writing suggested that‘The whole enterprise is beyond words - beyond conception.’ (Smith

1982: 27)

Given such a daunting forecast, it is perhaps just as well that EFL teachers

can now draw on a range of approaches to teaching writing. Over the last

20 years, process and product approaches have dominated much of the

teaching of writing that happens in the EFL classroom. In the last ten years,

genre approaches have gained adherents (e.g. Swales 1990, Tribble 1996:

37-57, Gee 1997). This paper offers some discussion of these approaches,

and argues for a synthesis which draws on all three. It will cover both

linguistic factors (how the approaches conceptualize writing) and educa-

tional factors (how the approaches conceptualize learning to write).

Product One of the most explicit descriptions of product approaches is provided

approaches by Pincas (1982a). She sees writing as being primarily about linguistic

knowledge, with attention focused on the appropriate use of vocabulary,

syntax, and cohesive devices. (Pincas 1982b)

In this approach, learning to write has four stages: familiarization;

controlled writing; guided writing; and free writing. The familiarization

stage aims to make learners aware of certain features of a particular text.

In the controlled and guided writing sections, the learners practise the

skills with increasing freedom until they are ready for the free writing

section, when they ‘use the writing skill as part of a genuine activity such

as a letter, story or essay’ (1982a: 22).

A typical product class might involve the learners familiarizing

themselves with a set of descriptions of houses, possibly written

especially for teaching purposes, by identifying, say, the prepositions

and the names of rooms used in a description of a house. At the

controlled stage, they might produce some simple sentences about

houses from a substitution table. The learners might then produce apiece of guided writing based on a picture of a house and, finally, at the

stage of free writing, a description of their own home.

ELT Journal Volume 54/2 April 2000 © Oxford University Press 2000 153

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Pincas (1982a: 24) sees learning as ‘assisted imitation’, and adopts many

techniques (e.g. substitution tables ibid.: 94), where learners respond to

a stimulus provided by the teacher. However, her comment that, at the

stage of free writing, ‘students should feel as if they are creating

something of their own’ (ibid.: 110) suggests a view of learners as being

ready to show rather more initiative.

In short, product-based approaches see writing as mainly concerned with

knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development as

mainly the result of the imitation of input, in the form of texts provided

by the teacher.

Process Although there are many different process approaches to writing (see,

approaches for example, Hedge 1988, White and Arndt 1991) they share some core

features. Tribble suggests that process approaches stress

. . . writing activities which move learners from the generation of ideasand the collection of data through to the ‘publication’ of a finished

text. (1996: 37)

Writing in process approaches is seen as predominantly to do with

linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less

emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar

and text structure.

There are different views on the stages that writers go through in

producing a piece of writing, but a typical model identifies four stages:

prewriting; composing/drafting; revising; and editing (Tribble 1996: 39).

This is a cyclical process in which writers may return to pre-writing

activities, for example, after doing some editing or revising.

A typical prewriting activity in the process approach would be for

learners to brainstorm on the topic of houses. At the composing/drafting

stage they would select and structure the result of the brainstorming

session to provide a plan of a description of a house. This would guide

the first draft of a description of a particular house. After discussion,

learners might revise the first draft working individually or in groups.

Finally, the learners would edit or proof-read the text.

In process approaches, the teacher primarily facilitates the learners’

writing, and providing input or stimulus is considered to be less important.

Like babies and young children who develop, rather than learn, their

mother tongue, second language learners develop, rather than consciously

learn, writing skills. Teachers draw out the learners’ potential.

Process approaches have a somewhat monolithic view of writing. The

process of writing is seen as the same regardless of what is being written

and who is writing. So while the amount of pre-writing in producing a

postcard to a friend and in writing an academic essay are different (see

Tribble 1996: 104) this is not reflected in much process teaching.

While a process approach may ignore the context in which writing

happens, this is unusual. For example Hedge (1988: 15 and passim)

154 Richard Badger and Goodith White

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identifies four elements of the context that pre-writing activities should

focus on: the audience, the generation of ideas, the organization of the

text, and its purpose.

Summarizing, we can say that process approaches see writing primarily

as the exercise of linguistic skills, and writing development as an

unconscious process which happens when teachers facilitate the exercise

of writing skills.

Genre approaches Genre approaches are relative newcomers to ELT. However, there are

strong similarities with product approaches and, in some ways, genre

approaches can be regarded as an extension of product approaches.

Like product approaches, genre approaches regard writing as pre-

dominantly linguistic but, unlike product approaches, they emphasize

that writing varies with the social context in which it is produced. So, we

have a range of kinds of writing-such as sales letters, research articles,and reports - linked with different situations (Flowerdew 1993: 307). As

not all learners need to operate in all social contexts, this view of texts

has implications for the writing syllabus.

For genre analysts, the central aspect of the situation is purpose.

Different kinds of writing, or genres, such as letters of apology, recipes,

or law reports, are used to carry out different purposes. Indeed, Swales

defines a genre

... as class of communicative events, the members of which share

some set of communicative purposes. (1990: 58)

Genres are also influenced by other features of the situation, such as the

subject matter, the relationships between the writer and the audience,

and the pattern of organization. This parallels Hedge’s (1988) approach,

described above. Martin (1993: 120) offers a diagrammatic explanation

of genre.

In terms of writing development, genre approaches have many

similarities with product approaches. Cope and Kalantzis (1993: 11)

talk of a wheel model of genre literacy. This wheel has three phases:

Figure 1: Martin’smodels of genre

Purpose[Genre]

A process genre approach to teaching writing 155

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modelling the target genre, where learners are exposed to examples of

the genre they have to produce; the construction of a text by learners

and teacher; and, finally, the independent construction of texts by

learners. In theory, the cycle can be repeated as and when necessary, but

it would seem that often each phase appears only once.

In the ELT field, Dudley-Evans (1997: 154) also identifies three stages in

genre approaches to writing. First, a model of a particular genre is

introduced and analysed. Learners then carry out exercises which

manipulate relevant language forms and, finally, produce a short text.

This parallels product approaches very closely.

In a genre class, learners might examine authentic descriptions of houses

produced by estate agents or realtors in order to sell the property. As

with product approaches, the learners would carry out an analysis of the

text, perhaps looking at some elements of the grammar or patterns of

vocabulary using a concordancer. They would also consider the socialcontext, including the fact that the text is, hopefully, based on a visit to

the house, that its purpose is selling a house, that the audience is made

up of potential buyers, and that the words are supported by pictures and

diagrams. With varying degrees of help, learners would then produce

partial texts. Finally, working on their own, they would produce

complete texts reflecting the social context and the language of the

original description of a house.

Proponents of genre approaches are not often explicit about their theory

of learning. However, the use of model texts and the idea of analysis

suggest that learning is partly a question of imitation and partly a matterof understanding and consciously applying rules.

In short, genre-based approaches see writing as essentially concerned with

knowledge of language, and as being tied closely to a social purpose, while

the development of writing is largely viewed as the analysis and imitation

of input in the form of texts provided by the teacher.

Comparing The three approaches are sometimes presented as opposed to each

product, process, other. Thus Gee says that

and genre

approaches The process approach generally represented a reaction against theproduct-based approach whereas the genre approach represented a

reaction to the so-called progressivist curriculum (1997: 25).

Amongst mother tongue teachers, we find heated comments such as

The process writing teacher, waiting while the child struggles for

control and ownership . . . actually favours white, middle-class

students. (Cope and Kalantzis 1993: 57).

Similarly, Kamler (1995: 9) criticizes the genre approach because of

. . . its narrow focus on language and text and its lack of attention tothe instructional and disciplinary contexts in which texts are

constructed.


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especially the purpose for the writing (as in genre approaches), and

skills in using language (as in process approaches)

writing development happens by drawing out the learners’ potential

(as in process approaches) and by providing input to which the

learners respond (as in product and genre approaches).

Writing in the One of the central insights of genre analysis is that writing is embedded

process genre in a social situation, so that a piece of writing is meant to achieve a

approach particular purpose which comes out of a particular situation. An

example might be an estate agent writing a description of a house in

order to sell it. This purpose has implications for the subject matter, the

writer/audience relationship and organization, channel, or mode (see

Hedge 1988: 15, and Martin 1993: 23). While genre analysis focuses on

the language used in a particular text, we would want to include

processes by which writers produce a text reflecting these elements

under the term ‘process genre’. This would cover the process by which

writers decide what aspects of the house should be highlighted, as well as

the knowledge of the appropriate language.

In the writing classroom, teachers need to replicate the situation as

closely as possible and then provide sufficient support for learners to

identify the purpose and other aspects of the social context. So learners

who wanted to be estate agents would need to consider that their

description is meant to sell the house (purpose), that it must appeal to a

certain group of people (tenor), that it must include certain information

(field), and that there are ways in which house descriptions are

presented (mode). Then, drawing on their knowledge of things such asvocabulary, grammar, and organization, our writers would use the skills

appropriate to the genre, such as redrafting and proof-reading, to

produce a description of a house which reflects the situation from which

it arises. We have attempted to illustrate this in the left-hand column of

Figure 2 (on the next page).

Different genres require different kinds of knowledge and different sets

of skills, and our knowledge of both the knowledge and skill involved in

different genres is limited. However, teachers are expert writers of many

genres, and a key feature of this approach is that they should draw on

their own knowledge of, and skills in, particular process genres.

The development of The development of writing will vary between different groups of

writing in a process learners because they are at different stages of their writing develop-

genre approach ment. Learners who know a lot about the production of a particular

genre, and are skilled in it, may need little or no input. Some groups of

learners will have a good awareness of how the potential audience may

constrain what is written. Other groups may lack knowledge of what

language is appropriate to a particular audience. In this case, the

learners need some kind of input in terms of, say, the language

appropriate to a particular audience, or the skills in deciding whom thepotential audience may be. What input is needed will depend on their

particular group of learners.


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Figure 2: A genre

process model of

teaching writing A process genre mode l

o f wr i t ing

Possib le input

Teacher

Learners

Texts

In many cases, the teacher is not able to find out what the learners know

or can do before the class. In this case, a deep-end approach modelled

on Willis (1996: 100) may be appropriate. Learners try to carry out one

element in a process genre, and then compare their texts or skills in text

production with some expert’s (possibly the teacher’s) version of this.

On the basis of this comparison, they or the teacher can then decide if

they need further input of knowledge or skills.

Where learners lack knowledge, we can draw on three potential sources:

the teacher, other learners, and examples of the target genre. Teachers

may provide input in terms of instruction (mention the number of

rooms), other learners may do the same in the less threatening context

of group work, but perhaps the most distinctive source of input about

contextual and linguistic knowledge in a genre process approach is

language awareness activities. Genre analysis attempts to reveal the

similarities between texts written for the same reason, and so it is likely

that these language awareness activities will be based on a corpus of the

relevant genre. Key materials for genre process teachers are sets of

corpora of the kinds of texts their learners want to write. In our house

description exercise, learners might investigate the kind of sentence

structure used in estate agents’ descriptions of a house, the kind of

vocabulary used to make the position sound attractive and where the

price appears. Flowerdew (1993) and Dudley-Evans (1997) also suggest

activities such as using flow charts to illustrate the organization of

particular genres and translation.

Learners may also require input about the skills needed for writing. A

rich source here comes from observing other students and the teacher.

Teachers may find direct instruction on skills effective - think about whyyou are writing the description - but an alternative is a demonstration by

the teacher or other skilled writer, possibly accompanied by a commentary

A process genre approach to teaching writing 159

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attempting to explain the mental processes that underlie the exercise of the

skill. For example, teachers might explain why they chose to include

certain information about a house and leave out other information.

Figure 2 illustrates the possible input in the process genre. The use of

dashes is intended to indicate that input is not always required.

Summary In this paper, we have outlined an approach to writing informed by a

product, process, and genre view of writing and writing development.

The model sees writing as a series of stages leading from a particular

situation to a text, with the teachers facilitating learners’ progress by

enabling appropriate input of knowledge and skills.

Received May 1999

References Smith, F. 1982. Writing and the Writer. London:Cope, B. and M. Kalantzis. 1993. ‘Background to

genre teaching’ in B. Cope and M. Kalantzis

(eds.). The Powers of Literacy: A GenreApproach to Teaching Writing. London: FalmerPress.

Heinemann.Swales, J. 1990. Genre Analysis. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Tribble, C. 1996. Writing. Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press.Dudley-Evans, T. 1997. ‘Genre models for the

teaching of academic writing to second languagespeakers: advantages and disadvantages’ in T.Miller (ed.). Functional Approaches to Written

Text: Classroom Applications. Washington DC:United States Information Agency.

Flowerdew, J . 1993. ‘An educational or processApproach to the teaching of professionalgenres’. ELT Journal 47/4: 305-16.

Hedge, T. 1993. Writing. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

White, R. 1987. Writing Advanced. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

White, R. and V. Arndt. 1991. Process Writing.

Harlow: Longman.Willis, J . 1996. A Framework for Task-Based

Learning. Harlow: Longman.

The authors

Gee, S. 1997. ‘Teaching writing a genre-basedapproach’. Review of English Language Teach-

ing 62: 24-40.

Kamler, B. 1995. ‘The grammar wars or what doteachers need to know about grammar?. Eng-

lish in Australia 114: 3-15.Martin. J. R. 1993. ‘A contextual theory of

language’ in B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.).The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to

Teaching Writing. London: Falmer Press.Pincas, A. 1982a. Teaching English Writing.

London: Macmillan.

Richard Badger (LLB, PGCE, MA, PhD) has taught

in Nigeria, Malaysia, and Algeria, and currentlyteaches at the Centre of English Language Teachingat the University of Stirling, UK. His researchinterests include the methodology of teaching writ-ing, legal language, genre analysis, and teachertraining.Email: <[email protected]>

Pincas, A. 1982b. Writing in English 1. London:Macmillan.

Goodith White (BA, Dip TEFL, M.Litt) has taughtin Italy, Finland, Singapore, Portugal, Eire, and theUK. She is currently lecturing at CELT, Universityof Stirling, UK, and is pursuing doctoral research insociolinguistics with Trinity College, Dublin. She hasrecently published a book on listening for OxfordUniversity Press.Email: <[email protected]>


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Genre and Product Writing