Integrative approach to teaching academic writing to the first-year students of the foreign language faculties

With the dominance of English as the international language communicating through writing in English is vital for any member of the society who wants to be successful, therefore developing students’ writing skills has been of a current interest in teaching foreign languages at Universities. This article aims to discuss a teaching approach which can provide University students with enough support before they start writing something for academic purposes.

The paper begins with analyzing two approaches to teaching writing that have dominated over the recent years: writing process and writing product, with their advantages and disadvantages. The product approach is a traditional approach focusing on the final product of writing which is the result of students’ mimicking a model text, that is usually analyzed at the initial stage. Emphasis is put on accuracy of produced texts, namely correct and diverse grammar, spelling and vocabulary usage. This approach is popular with teachers due to its easy application.

The process approach tends to focus more on the process of creating a text through the various stages of generating ideas, drafting, revising and editing. Vocabulary and grammar used are not the key factors in assessing the written text. Students are given considerable freedom within the task, so the outcome of writing is not preconceived. Though most of methodologists consider the process approach to be a more effective method of teaching writing teachers often avoid it because of its being time consuming.

Each approach still has some disadvantages that can only be compensated by the advantages of the other. So instead of using either of the approaches in isolation while teaching academic writing, paragraph writing in particular, the article suggests integrating them especially for working with students with a low competence in English. Such integration can facilitate students to generate ideas in a comprehensive manner and provide the students with appropriate support of grammar and vocabulary