Approaches to Teaching Writing

Approaches to Teaching Writing


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There are many approaches to teaching writing
The first approach is called the
product approach
It did not go beyond putting a title on
the board, providing students with
some ideas and vocabulary, and then letting them to write
At the end of the period,
students’ compositions were collected,
and marked
Therefore, teachers were mostly
concerned with the final product of
writing, and what that product should
‘look’ like
Also, a good deal of attention
was placed on ‘model’ paragraphs
that students would imitate and on
how well a student’s final product
measured up against a list of criteria that included
content, organization, vocabulary use,
grammatical use and mechanical
considerations such as spelling and
punctuation
The result of such approach was that
even though students would do hundreds
of grammar exercises and memorize
many vocabulary lists, they often be
surprised, frustrated and discouraged
upon receiving their essays full of red
marks
They could not understand how
after all that hard work, they still had
difficulty in writing