English Writing Teaching: A Comparative Study of the Effectiveness of Process Approach and Product Approach

Abstract

Writing is considered among the most difficult skills to master, and the teaching of writing has also proved no less than a challenge to EFL teachers around the world. As far as the Vietnamese educational context is concerned, the teaching of writing still suffers from several difficulties and fails to achieve the desired results. This study aims to compare the efficacy of two approaches to teaching writing: the Product approach, and the Process approach to determine which instructional procedure is more effective. Another goal to be achieved in this research is identifying possible modifications in the way EFL teachers conduct their lessons using the process approach. The study was conducted on non-English major students and set its site in Ton Duc Thang University. In this study, a mixed-method research design was employed to answer the two research questions. The findings indicate that the process approach is likely more effective than the product approach in teaching academic writing to non-English major students. For the second research problem, it is found that all teachers have attempted to make adaptations, to a greater or lesser extent, to their teaching procedure.