The product approach With the product approach, teachers focus on what a final piece of writing will look like and measure it against criteria of “vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation,” as well as content and organization (Brown 1994, 320). The normal procedure is to assign a piece of writing, collect it, and then return it for further revision with the errors either corrected or marked for the student to do the corrections (Raimes 1983). The product approach has received much criticism because it ignores the actual processes used by students, or any writers, to produce a piece of writing. Instead, it focuses on imitation and churning out a perfect product, even though very few people can create a perfect product on the first draft. Another criticism is that this approach requires constant error correction, and that affects students’ motivation and self-esteem. The product approach does not effectively prepare students for the real world or teach them to be the best writers. Nevertheless, the product approach still has some credibility because at some point there will be a final draft that requires attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation.