Comparative Essay: Teaching Writing

COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING

Comparative Essay: Teaching Writing

Dannae Del Campo Méndez y Gabriela Quezada Cabezas

Universidad Católica de La Santísima Concepción


The psycholinguistic Lenneberg (1967) once mentioned that human beings

universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are culturally specific,

learned behaviours. This quotation highlights the importance of teaching writing in an

effective manner, teaching students the necessary strategies that will help them to develop

and to improve their writing skills. In the following paragraphs will be develop the most

relevant characteristics of teaching writing skill according to three different authors Brown

(2001) Nunan (1999) and Ur, (1996).

According to Brown (2001) there are 6 main issues on the process of teaching writing. One

of these issues is called process vs. product. The author explained that half a century ago

teachers were focused on the final product of writing instead of the process to get to that

product which is what concerns teachers today. In the same issue, according to Shih (1986);

it can be noticed that the approach focuses on the process of writing instead of the written

product, it helps students to understand the process of writing, it also gives importance to

process of revision, it gives students time to write and rewrite and it gives them feedback

during the entire process and not just on the final product. Moreover, according to Nunan

(1999) the nature of the writing is focused on product and process approaches. The first of

the approaches is defined as an approach which is focused on the final product;

furthermore, the second of them is focused on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting

a piece of writing. Nunan (1999) gave special attention on the process approach and some

critics about it such as the development of the necessary critical thinking skill to produce a

factual writing in which they need to succeed in school. Finally the author concluded in

terms of nature that what students need in the writing classrooms are appropriate

approaches and procedures. Brown (2001) supported this idea by mentioning that it is


important to find a balance between process and product but that the product is, after all,

the ultimate goal and the process is not the end; it is the mean to the end.

Furthermore, another issue named by Brown (2001) is called contrastive rhetoric

and it is based on an article written by Kaplan (1996) in which he argued that all types of

language have different patterns of written discourse. Consequently English learners bring

predispositions because of their native language; this means that everyone’s native culture

has an effect on the process of learning writing. Nunan (1999) also mentioned Kaplan’s

work. He argued that the study has relationships between cultural thought patterns and

discourse. The main argument of the research in contrastive rhetoric as it was mentioned

above is based on that certain culturally determined ways of thinking and communicating

will transfer themselves to second language texts.

However, Nunan (1999) not only shows similarities with Brown (2001) but also

with another author, Ur (1996). Nunan (1999) explained the differences and similarities

between writing and a “talk written down”. At first, he quoted Halliday (1985) to explain

the purposes of the written language, such as communicating actions, information and

entertainment. Then, he explained that written language and spoken language are similar in

terms of function. Nevertheless, they differ in the context in which they are used. They also

differ in the permanent or semipermanent record through the time and in the ratio of

content words to grammatical words. Moreover, Ur (1996) explained only the differences

between written and spoken language. She argued that the permanence is one of the

characteristics that differentiate written from spoken language. She also mentioned that the

density is more present in written than in spoken language among others.


On the contrary, Brown (2001) mentioned only the characteristics of written language, not

mentioning the spoken language. Some of these characteristics are the permanence, the

production time, the distance and the orthography, among others.

Finally, Brown (2001) and Ur (1996), gave special attention to the process of

evaluating students’ writing and giving feedback. Ur (1996) gave as an advice to correct

language mistakes and make suggestions about content and organization, also she explained

how important is that students rewrite their pieces of writing, not only because it reinforces

learning but also because it is an integral part of the writing process as a whole. At last she

also mentioned that peer-correction is a good option because it can be a time-saving and

useful technique. Moreover, (Brown, 2001) gave other kind of advices about evaluating and

giving feedback students. He explained that the most instructive evaluative feedbacks that a

teacher can give are their commands, both specific and summative, regarding the students’

work. He also mentioned that he emphasize of the evaluation should be on the content of

the papers, then the organization and discourse and finally the syntax, vocabulary and

mechanics. Another important fact that it is mentioned is that students need to understand

that the teachers’ grades, scores, and comments are varying forms of feedback from which

they can benefit.

To sum up, in Nunan’s words (1999) “the written language is in terms of skills the

most difficult thing to do in language; it is something most native speakers never master”.

In the previous paragraphs were described and mentioned some characteristics, similarities,

and differences between 3 authors’ points of view. The first author analysed was Brown

(2001) who created special attention on the written form itself, not mentioning spoken

language as Nunan (1999) and Ur (1996) did. Moreover, Brown (2001) also gave attention


to the process vs. product and contrastive rhetoric as some of the issues of the process of

writing. The second author analysed, Nunan (1999) mentioned the process and product as

the nature of language. He also compared the written and spoken language, not mentioning

the evaluating or giving feedback process as Ur (1996) and Brown (2001) did. Finally, Ur

(1996) mentioned in her work the differences between spoken and written language and

some advices directed to teachers about how evaluate and give feedback to students, not

mentioning the issues of the process of writing.


References

Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language

pedagogy. Longman

Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education. Language

Learning, 16(1-2), 1–20.

Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. Wiley.

Nunan, D. (1999). Second language teaching & learning. Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Shih, M. (1986). Content-Based Approaches to Teaching Academic Writing. Tesol

Quarterly, 20(4), 617–648.

Ur, P. (1996) A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Comparative Essay: Teaching Writing

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