The best of two approaches: process/ genre-based approach to teaching writing

Writing instruction has become a field of increasing interest at higher learning institutions in recent years. There have been numerous approaches to the teaching of writing in the history of language teaching and these have led to several paradigm shifts in the field. One of the major concerns voiced by content course instructors is that, even though learners have reached an advanced level in their institutions, their level of writing competency seems to be lower than expected. Researchers like Cumming (1998) and Matsuda (1999) note that L2 practitioners are still in search of a coherent, comprehensive theory. The purpose of this paper therefore is to propose a coherent theory of teaching writing by integrating two major approaches, i.e. the process approach and the genre approach. This paper will provide a direction for future research that may improve the pedagogy in second language writing classrooms