The effectiveness of the process, product and process-product approaches in the development of writing skills in the senior phase
The teaching of English First Additional Language in South African schools, towards the development of learners’ writing skills, requires the employment of the process approach (DBE 2011: 10). The Department of Basic Education (DBE) clarifies that when learners write, they will need to use the writing process approach so as to produce coherent sentences without grammatical errors (2011: 36). The aim of this study is to compare and contrast the relative effectiveness of the process approach, product approach and the combination of these two approaches known as the process-product approach, in the development of English First Additional Language (FAL) writing skills in the Senior Phase. Three groups of Grade 8 and 9 English FAL learners, comprising of a sample of 186 learners from Quintile 3 schools in uMhlathuze Circuit Management under King Cetshwayo District were investigated so as to find out if they would develop good paragraph writing skills when exposed to several instructional interventions using any of the three approaches. The analysis of results is based on the Quasi-Experimental design which follows the pre-test-treatment-posttest model using the mixed methodology. It assumes the multi-method strategy as quan+QUAL (the lower case quan- explains the lower priority of the quantitative orientation). Consequently, the quantitative results are used to confirm the qualitative results. Findings of this study proved that when both the process and product approaches are combined and used recursively, and in a complementary manner as the process-product approach, they significantly yield higher results in developing the paragraph writing skills of English FAL learners in the Senior Phase than when each approach is used exclusively.
English teaching --learners writing skills --process product approach
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations