THE IMPACT OF THE PROCESS-GENRE ORIENTED INSTRUCTION ON ESSAY WRITING: A CASE OF THIRD YEAR LMD STUDENTS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AT BISKRA UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Students of English at Biskra University consider essay writing as a heavy burden that they have to cope with. Essay instruction still relies on product-oriented approach, yet writing practitioners have recently highlighted its failure to develop low writing proficiency. Furthermore, it fails to develop students‟ writing performance and to raise their awareness of importance of processing essay writing and the target genre features. To promote their writing proficiency, an instructional approach is required to fit the needs of EFL classes of Biskra University. Hence, process-genre-oriented approach offers its practical principles that can develop writing in terms of its process and genre knowledge. The present study has been administered to investigate the effects of adopting this synthesized approach into EFL classes of writing in Biskra University. It further investigates its effects on the five aspects of effective essay writing: content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics. It also explores its effects on the students‟ knowledge of genre features, purpose and audience. 116 students who represent third year LMD students have taken part in this study: 63 students form the experimental group, and 53 students form the control group. The experimental group has been exposed to process-genre-oriented instruction while the control group has received product-oriented instruction. A set of procedures have been taken in the light of results obtained from a pilot study that has taken place with a group of 25 volunteers from EFL classes. First, T-tests have been conducted with the two groups. Second, a post-experiment questionnaire further supports the T-tests scores, for it evaluates the students‟ perceptions and attitudes towards academic writing. Third, classroom observation also reports their writing performance in their classrooms. Accordingly, process-genre-oriented approach has proved to be an effective instructional approach to EFL writing classes of Biskra University starting from the first year to the third year LMD classes.