Shifting a Product-Oriented into a Process Oriented Approaches: A Challenging Journey from a Writing Classroom
Anita Kurniawati
English Teacher Education Program Satya Wacana Christian University
In the past few decades new pedagogy in writing has begun to develop: traditional teacher-centered approaches are evolving into more learner-centered courses (Reid, 2001); product-oriented approaches have been shifted into process-oriented approaches (Sokolik, 2003; Wang, 2009); and peer review has been accepted as a valuable tool to improve students writing ability Tsui and Ng, 2000; Ekşı, 2012; Shih-hsien, 2011). With those concepts, I designed my Expository and Argumentative Writing (EAW) class last semester. I experienced a challenging and rewarding process throughout the semester.
EAW is a pre-requisite course students have to take before Academic Writing course. It introduces students to two other types of essay, expository and argumentative essays. To provide a supportive classroom condition, I implemented what Zamel (1983) called as a dynamic teaching/learning relationship between writers and their readers. The students would have opportunities for improvement through discussion, collaboration, and feedback (Hegde, 2001), through reading and through exposures to model from general instruction in English or the teachers written comments Casanave, . The process-oriented approaches see writing as a nonlinear or recursive process. This, as Hedge (2001, pp. 305-307) claims, involves planning, revising, and producing reader -based prose.
To integrate all the concepts, I implemented peer works since the second meeting. I believed that peer review was a good activity to produce reader-based prose. Students could start from simple thing such as asking for clarification from a certain sentence and move to a more complicated thing such as asking for clarification from a certain idea. So, on our second meeting I provided a task sheet asking the students to identify their peer s draft: whether the topic sentence is clear, the supporting details are appropriate, etc. I expected that after they exchanged papers and filled in the task sheet, they could discuss them. However, as most of the students put a check mark on YES option to almost all the questions, the discussion did not really work well.
they did not want to embarrass their peers as well. This is a similar condition to what Carson and Nelson (1996) found in their study to a group of Chinese students. Knowing this, I then discussed some drafts to the whole class and showed them how the interactive process between writers and their readers might take place. I also convinced them that negative feedback could also be positive when it was delivered appropriately. It was after several weeks before they finally could produce comments such as
For me, the background information is not really clear. Maybe you can put more information so the sentences will have a better coherence with the hook and also the thesis statement. (Number 8, Vivi)
The background is clear enough, although maybe it contains too much opinion (which should probably be better in the thesis statement). (Number 20, Ria)
From my experience, I could also see that developing a sense of audience was quite difficult for the students. The process of writing the second essay showed the students struggle. This might happen because students tend to view writing only for the sake of writing. They did not realize that there was audience who would read their writing draft and that different audience influenced their writing process. Therefore, when they were assigned to argue why a specific call for action was necessary for a certain audience, they felt confused. One of my students, Caca (a pseudonym) wrote an interesting thought in her portfolio:
The other thing that shocked me is about sense of audience. … ) have to decide call for action for my reader. I never thought about sense of the audience and now I had to find call for action for my readers. In addition, I always believed that my readers should understand what I wrote. I never thought about writing in order to be read by readers. All I knew is only pouring all ideas in the form of writing.
Reflecting to my students responses in each meeting made me aware more to the significant roles of a teacher. I should admit that making the students realize the real value of peer-review required efforts. Shih-hsien (2011) shared Min (2006) pointed out that feedback from trained peers have positive impact upon EFL students writing. We, however, should not forget that students could not be experts in only few seconds. They need us, their teachers, to show them how to do it. Shifting the product-oriented into process-oriented approaches was also not an easy process as it challenged the students habits. We need to adapt the classroom practices in such a way so that the students could notice the recursive process of writing. I was quite satisfied when a student, Sari, shared her experience writing her portfolio. She explained how she could improve her final draft, ‘I asked my friend to read my draft and I revised it. I asked my friend to read it again, and I revised it again. ) said to her with a big smile, Welcome to the writing world!
REFERENCES
Carson, J, & Nelson, G, (1996), Chinese students' perceptions of ESL peer response group interaction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 5(1), 1-19,
Casanave, C.P. (2012). Controversy and change in how we view L2 writing in international context. In L. Alsagoff, S.L. McKay, G. Hu, and W. Renandya (Eds.), Principles and practices for teaching English as an international language (pp. 282-298). New York: Routledge
Ekşı, G. . Peer Review versus Teacher Feedback in Process Writing: (ow Effective?. International Journal Of Applied Educational Studies, 13(1), 33-48
Hedge, T. (2001). Teaching and learning in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Min, (. T. 6 The effects of trainer peer review of EFL students revision types and writing quality. Journal ofSecond Language Writing, 15(2), 118-141.
Reid, J. (2001). Writing. In R. Carter and D. Nunan (Eds.). The Cambridge guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (pp. 28-33). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shih-hsien, Y. (2011). Exploring the Effectiveness of Using Peer Evaluation and Teacher Feedback in College Students' Writing. Asia-Pacific Education Researcher (De La Salle University Manila), 20(1), 144-150.
Sokolik, M. (2003). Writing. In D.Nunan (Ed.), Practical English Language Teaching (pp.87-108). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Tsui, A. B. & Ng, M. (2000). Do secondary L2 writers benefit from peer comments? Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 9(2), 147-170.
Zamel, V. (1983). The composing process of advanced ESL students: Six case studies. TESOL Quarterly, 17 (2), 167-187.
