Abstract:

Children entering primary school level have problems in Spanish writing and even more in English writing because they do not know the language form and the process of writing. That lack of Knowledge affects children’s learning writing skill. Academic literature suggests that children must develop specific components to start writing: linguistic knowledge, critical thinking, and the process of writing to be successful in writing their thoughts. However, English at schools is not perceived as important as it should be because English classes are thought by other teachers from different subjects, who often lack teaching capacity to apply many approaches to develop English writing skill.

The main aim of this paper was to introduce a teaching dual method (the Product and Process approaches) to determine the influence to enhance writing skill in children at Ana Páez Educative Unit. Action research was implemented during the academic term October 2018- March 2019 with 37 participants. Teachers’ observation through an anecdotal note was used to observe students’ written compositions focusing on six components: content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation. The proposed method consisted of teaching children vocabulary, grammar, punctuation and organization through a model text. First, the teacher made children read and highlighted vocabulary and grammar structures to get familiarized with the linguistic knowledge. Then, the teacher made children practice using controlled writing activity. Later, the teacher used pictures or flashcards according to the topic to help children generate ideas and wrote into a brainstorm. Then, the teacher asked children to use those ideas to write similar sentences to the modeling text. After that, the teacher asked students to organize the information by analyzing the model and writing the first draft. During the first draft, the teacher had to provide feedback to help children be aware of their own errors. Finally, the teacher made a class presentation to publish children`s writings. The research developed three phases: the diagnosis phase, the implementation phase, and the evaluation phase. The study revealed that children’s written compositions improved after applying the product and process approach to teach writing skill. The product approach helped children to acquire the language by modeling text, controlled writing and guided writing activities. This approach contributed to learning linguistic knowledge: grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and punctuation. Then, the process approach stages allowed children to analyze the sequence of ideas using the modeling text. It made children be aware of the importance to write sequence information. Feedback also helped children improve their writing skill. As a conclusion, we considered that a balanced integration of product approach and process approach allowed children to enhance writing skills. Therefore, we suggest that English teachers can apply this dual method to give children the opportunity to acquire the language and develop their writing skill.

Keywords:

Product approach, writing process approach, linguistic knowledge, writing skill.