For my first foray into a historical look at the intersection of ESL and composition scholarship, I decided to begin with the ELT Journal exclusively, looking at one article from the 1980s and one from the 2000s that approached writing teaching in some way to see how the approaches differed between these decades. The first thing that I did was to look though each issue of the journal from these decades to see what types of conversations were taking place. While searching, I noticed some immediate patterns that will surely come up during the course of this semester, such as the focus on peer review and teacher written corrective feedback that dominated the 2000s with little to no mention of these methods during the 1980s. Something that I found disappointing was that both decades had little (dare I say no) emphasis on preparing students for other writing tasks outside of the ESL classroom. I hope that my quick search based on titles alone actually hides some gems that focus in this preparation.

Once I had skimmed and scanned these two decades, I wanted some sort of coherence for my first two chosen articles, so I selected two that focused on “approaches.” I wanted to see what different approaches researchers emphasized in these two decades, and how they either differed or remained the same.

The first article I read was “A Quantitative vs. a Qualitative Approach to the Teaching of English Composition” by Behrooz Azabdaftari from 1981. Here, Azabdaftari defines qualitative approaches as the use of teaching techniques that emphasize the quality of the writing rather than the quantity. He defines quality as encouraging “primarily correct responses” in which a controlled choice based on a student’s abilities is emphasized (411). Azabdaftari then discusses authors who have advocated for qualitative writing techniques with success, including R.J. Owens, who noted that quantity in writing at the ESL stage is pointless because any effort to write by these students is “concealed translation and the more he is required to write, the more he produces mistakes” (411). In general, Azabdaftari finds that “many … language teachers” believe that controlled composition is necessary for quality writing at this stage (412).

On the other hand, he also notes that some experts believe that quantitative techniques – simply getting students to learn to write by writing – is best. One expert, D. Wolfe, believes that simply teaching drills and exercises never gives students a chance to work with the writing itself (412). Azabdaftari himself seems conflicted with this method, noting that many studies have shown that the act of writing to teach writing has mostly “contradictory results” (413). He believes that quantitative techniques can be best for native speakers because of their knowledge of the language rules, but nonnative speakers simply need some kind of qualitative teaching (414). He concludes by stating that composition practice will be more “more rewarding” when taught in “minimal steps” that advance within strict boundaries of their capabilities (414).

The second article I read was published in 2000. Called “A Process Genre Approach to Teaching Writing,” authors Richard Badger and Goodith White discuss the growing movement towards teaching genre in writing courses that had begun during the 1990s. They first articulate previous approaches, including the product approach and the process approach. The product approach is about “linguistic knowledge with attention focused on the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax, and cohesive devices” (153), and is primarily concerned with structure of language and imitation of work provided by the teacher (154). The process approach is about the writing process including planning, drafting, and peer review with less emphasis on grammar and structure. Badger and White note that this style emphasizes writing development rather that conscious learning of writing skills (154). Finally, they explore the genre approach, which is about teaching the social context and situations in which texts are written as well as the analysis of these situations (155-56).

Ultimately Bader and White advocate a “process genre approach” in which all three methods are combined. First, teachers “replicate the situation as closely as possible” and allow students to identify the social context; then they use the process method to write what they know, share with each other, and re-draft and proofread (158). The authors believe this approach is best to combine both the “old” ways of thinking about writing with the newer emphasis on genre theory.

Despite being written 20 years apart, the overlaps between the concepts and ideas in these two articles are fascinating. What Badger and White call a product approach seems to mimic many of the ideas of Azabdaftari’s qualitative approach, in which teaching writing is about correct language rather than a free flow of ideas. Likewise, his quantitative approach overlaps some with Badger and White’s process approach, in which they acknowledge that second language writers may develop such writing skills rather than “learn” them (154). What Badger and White add is the genre approach, which was something that began to develop as part of the social turn, when compositionists and writing instructors began to think about alternate discourse communities and power. This is likely why such a consideration is not made in the article from 1981. In general, these two articles present an interesting model of thinking through how things “change” over time – incrementally. While some of the ideas and strategies remained fundamental to the field, others were added and changed based upon the social situation of the day.

It was also striking how much both of these articles emphasized many of the writing skills, techniques, and knowledge that college composition values, despite having ESL instructors as the intended audience. There was some discussion of grammar and modeling, particularly with those parts emphasizing student’s need to write “correctly,” but overall the emphasis was more geared towards the rhetorical aspects of writing than I expected. I was disappointed, however, that while these ideas are present, neither article acknowledges that the emphasis on this writing knowledge could be useful in other courses, particularly in a college composition course. I would suggest that all research, particularly for those experts writing about working with English language learners, in which such knowledge built at this level will affect all of the student’s subsequent learning, should acknowledge ways in which learning about process, product, genre, qualitative, quantitative, and other such methods will have implications for all learning and writing these students will complete in the future. I will be curious to see if these trends continue as I dive further into this journal over the course of the semester.

Works Cited

Azabdaftari, Behrooz. “A Quantitative vs. a Qualitative Approach to the Teaching of English Composition.” ELT Journal, vol. 35, no 4, 1981, pp. 411–415.

Badger, Richard, and Goodith White “A Process Genre Approach to Teaching Writing.” ELT Journal, vol. 54, no. 2, 2000, pp. 153-160.