1. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
ComparativeEssay: TeachingWriting
Dannae Del Campo Méndez y Gabriela Quezada Cabezas
Universidad Católica de La Santísima Concepción

2. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
The psycholinguistic Lenneberg(1967) once mentioned that human beings
universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are culturally specific,
learned behaviours. This quotation highlights the importance of teaching writing in an
effective manner, teaching students the necessary strategies that will help them to develop
and to improve their writing skills. In the following paragraphs will be develop the most
relevant characteristics of teaching writing skill according to three different authors Brown
(2001)Nunan (1999) and Ur, (1996).
According to Brown (2001) there are 6 main issues on the process of teaching writing. One
of these issues is called process vs. product. The author explained that half a century ago
teachers were focused on the final product of writing instead of the process to get to that
product which is what concerns teachers today. In the same issue, according to Shih (1986);
it can be noticed that the approach focuses on the process of writing instead of the written
product, it helps students to understand the process of writing, it also gives importance to
process of revision, it gives students time to write and rewrite and it gives them feedback
during the entire process and not just on the final product. Moreover, according to Nunan
(1999) the nature of the writing is focused on product and process approaches. The first of
the approaches is defined as an approach which is focused on the final product;
furthermore, the second of them is focused on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting
a piece of writing. Nunan (1999) gave special attention on the process approach and some
critics about it such as the development of the necessary critical thinking skill to produce a
factual writing in which they need to succeed in school. Finally the author concluded in
terms of nature that what students need in the writing classrooms are appropriate
approaches and procedures. Brown (2001) supported this idea by mentioning that it is

3. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
important to find a balance between process and product but that the product is, after all,
the ultimate goal and the process is not the end; it is the mean to the end.
Furthermore, another issue named by Brown (2001) is called contrastive rhetoric
and it is based on an article written by Kaplan (1996) in which he argued that all types of
language have different patterns of written discourse. Consequently English learners bring
predispositions because of their native language; this means that everyone’s native culture
has an effect on the process of learning writing. Nunan (1999) also mentioned Kaplan’s
work. He argued that the study has relationships between cultural thought patterns and
discourse. The main argument of the research in contrastive rhetoric as it was mentioned
above is based on that certain culturally determined ways of thinking and communicating
will transfer themselves to second language texts.
However, Nunan (1999) not only shows similarities with Brown (2001) but also
with another author, Ur (1996). Nunan (1999) explained the differences and similarities
between writing and a “talk written down”. At first, he quoted Halliday (1985) to explain
the purposes of the written language, such as communicating actions, information and
entertainment. Then, he explained that written language and spoken language are similar in
terms of function. Nevertheless, they differ in the context in which they are used. They also
differ in the permanent or semipermanent record through the time and in the ratio of
content words to grammatical words. Moreover, Ur (1996) explained only the differences
between written and spoken language. She argued that the permanence is one of the
characteristics that differentiate written from spoken language. She also mentioned that the
density is more present in written than in spoken language among others.

4. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
On the contrary, Brown (2001) mentioned only the characteristics of written language, not
mentioning the spoken language. Some of these characteristics are the permanence, the
production time, the distance and the orthography, among others.
Finally, Brown (2001) and Ur (1996), gave special attention to the process of
evaluating students’ writing and giving feedback. Ur (1996) gave as an advice to correct
language mistakes and make suggestions about content and organization, also she explained
how important is that students rewrite their pieces of writing, not only because it reinforces
learning but also because it is an integral part of the writing process as a whole. At last she
also mentioned that peer-correction is a good option because it can be a time-saving and
useful technique. Moreover, (Brown, 2001)gave other kind of advices about evaluating and
giving feedback students. He explained that the most instructive evaluative feedbacks that a
teacher can give are their commands, both specific and summative, regarding the students’
work. He also mentioned that he emphasize of the evaluation should be on the content of
the papers, then the organization and discourse and finally the syntax, vocabulary and
mechanics. Another important fact that it is mentioned is that students need to understand
that the teachers’ grades, scores, and comments are varying forms of feedback from which
they can benefit.
To sum up, in Nunan’s words (1999) “the written language is in terms of skills the
most difficult thing to do in language; it is something most native speakers never master”.
In the previous paragraphs were described and mentioned some characteristics, similarities,
and differences between 3 authors’ points of view. The first author analysed was Brown
(2001) who createdspecial attention on the written form itself, not mentioning spoken
language as Nunan (1999) and Ur (1996) did. Moreover, Brown (2001) also gave attention

5. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
to the process vs. product and contrastive rhetoric as some of the issues of the process of
writing. The second author analysed, Nunan (1999) mentioned the process and product as
the nature of language. He also compared the written and spoken language, not mentioning
the evaluating or giving feedback process as Ur (1996) and Brown(2001)did. Finally, Ur
(1996) mentioned in her work the differences between spoken and written language and
some advices directed to teachers about how evaluate and give feedback to students, not
mentioning the issues of the process of writing.

6. COMPARATIVE ESSAY: TEACHING WRITING
References
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language
pedagogy. Longman
Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education.Language
Learning, 16(1-2), 1–20.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language.Wiley.
Nunan, D. (1999). Second language teaching & learning.Heinle&Heinle Publishers.
Shih, M. (1986).Content-Based Approaches to Teaching Academic Writing.Tesol
Quarterly, 20(4), 617–648.
Ur, P. (1996) A Course in Language Teaching.Cambridge University Press.