The Effects of the Process-Genre Approach on Korean EFL University Students’ Writing Abilities

The purpose of this study is to investigate a model for teaching English writing skills which is focused on the process-genre approach for Korean EFL university students. The present study aims to verify the effectiveness of the model on the improvement of students’ writing abilities. In this study, six representative classes were instructed to write in English throughout a 15 weeks semester in 2015. Three classes were taught through a process-genre approach, and the other three classes were taught through a process approach. This study, therefore, analyzed Korean L2 students’ writings of four different genres; narrative, comparison, cause-effect, and argumentative essays. The results showed that the process-genre approach proved to be a more effective writing instructional approach to improve participants’ writing abilities. Particularly, the results indicated that process-genre writing instruction was more effective based on students’ use of vocabulary in expository text genres than the process writing instruction. The findings also give some pedagogical implications for teaching strategies to raise genre-specific awareness in L2 writings.