Process Approach to Writing in the Post-Process Era:A Case Study of Two College Students

Process Approach to Writing in the Post-Process Era:A Case Study of Two College Students

Process approach to writing has been dominantly popular in second language writing classrooms over the last two decades. However, its privileged status as a single paradigm for writing research and pedagogy has been challenged recently. Unlike process approach whose focus is on the writer's cognitive dealing with rhetorical problems, the new paradigm stresses that writing is a social artifact. The present study examined whether or not process approach has a legitimate place in the classroom through examining two college students' writing processes. The verbal protocol of the students' writing processes revealed that they approached writing tasks differently. While one student examined her writing at both global and local level, the other student seemed to focus on generating ideas and text, ignorant of higher- level writing skills. Furthermore, the examination of their products identified the fact that the difference in the processes was reflected in the products. The study concludes with the suggestion that process approach still possess many strong points for second language research and pedagogy, indicating that the problem does not lie in the complete replacement of the old paradigm with the new one, but in the integration of the new paradigm into the existing one.