Research on teaching writing in a second
language was initiated in the late 1960s, and
most early efforts were centered on techniques
for teaching writing. These efforts
led to the process approach, which helps
students to work through several stages of
the writing process. Later, more attention
was paid to the nature of writing in various
situations. This then brought popularity to
the genre approach, which focuses on models
and key features of texts written for a
particular purpose. In the process approach,
a teacher typically has students follow the
steps of prewriting, writing, revising, and
editing before achieving the final product,
and this sequence teaches students how to
write. In the genre approach, samples of a
specific genre are introduced, and some distinctive
characteristics of the given genre
are pointed out so that students notice specific
configurations of that genre. Next, students
attempt to produce the first draft
through imitating the given genre, and I felt
that this reproducing procedure might work
for Korean students.