Journal archive

Abstract: Teaching writing as a skill has always been a controversial issue in the field of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Numerous approaches and methods that are used to develop students’ writing skills still leave the question about the most effective ones open for discussion. Recently considerable attention has been paid to product and process-focused approaches. Nevertheless, the results of a survey conducted among TEFL instructors allowed us to arrive at the conclusion that product-oriented approach still dominates in the ELT classrooms in Russia. The problem with this approach is that it is traditionally language-focused and gives little attention to developing writing fluency. The paper describes and analyses the results of an experiment conducted by the authors. Twenty first-year students majoring in English and doing their BA degrees in Interpreting and Translation participated in a two-stage experiment. In the course of the first stage, product-oriented approach to teaching writing was implemented. During the second stage students explored writing as a process. The authors claim that process-oriented writing or a combination of process and paragraph-first approaches are more efficient when teaching academic writing to students at tertiary level. Finally, the paper provides some guidelines for overcoming barriers to teaching academic writing to university students that might be helpful for TEFL practitioners.