The Differences between the product and process based approaches to the teaching of grammar.

The Differences between the product and process based approaches to the teaching of grammar.There are several ways to approach writing in the classroom. It should be said at the beginning that there is not necessarily any 'right' or 'best' way to teach writing skills.

The best practice in any situation will depend on the type of student, the text type being studied, the school system and many other factors. Thus, this approaches can prescribe as a system for the teaching of writing that is optimal for all teaching situations. Rather, I hope to describe and contrast two popular, yet very different, approaches and examine how both can be used in the classroom.

Among the various ways of exploiting grammar in the classroom, product and process approaches have been enormously influential in language teaching. The differences is as below;

Process writing

Product writing

text as a resource for comparison

ideas as starting point

more than one draft

more global, focus on purpose, theme, text type, i.e., reader is emphasised

collaborative

emphasis on creative process

imitate model text

organisation of ideas more important than ideas themselves

one draft

features highlighted including controlled practice of those features

individual

emphasis on end product

The principle of these two approaches cannot be separated but should be integrated. Product based and process based approaches are like two parts of the same circle. It cannot be said which should be the first or the second but we can choose which one of the approaches to teach grammar. Fathman and Whalley (1990) propose content and form feedback should occur simultaneously. Also, they emphasis the important of rewriting, no matter which teacher's feedback focuses on form (grammatical error) or content. This proves these two approaches are related to each other.

Advantages of the Process Approach. I rather use the process approach because the process approaches to writing tend to focus more on the varied classroom activities which promote the development of language use: brainstorming, group discussion, re-writing. The process approach has been accepted and applied in writing classes because of its effectiveness. The effectiveness of the process approach can vary in many ways. First, in the product approach, the focus is on the end result of the learning process, and the learner is expected to perform as a fluent and competent user of the language.

The process approach, in contrast, stresses the process that writers go through in composing texts (Nunan, 1991). Brown (2001) states that [in the product oriented approach] a great deal of attention was placed on model compositions that students would emulate and how well a students 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 (p. 335).

The process approach, on the other hand, lets students manage their own writing by giving students a chance to think as they write (Brown, 2001, p. 336). That is, students convey their messages to the readers in written form through the complex writing process; prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing.