TEACHING VIETNAMESE UNDERGRADUATES’ INTRODUCTION SECTION WRITING THROUGH PROCESS GENRE APPROACH

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to find out whether the process genre approach is better than the product approach to teach introduction writing to university students in Vietnam. A non-equivalent control group experimental design with pretest and posttest was used to determine the effects of the research writing program on students’ introduction writing ability in terms of content, organization, language use and mechanics between the control group and experimental group. In the experiment, 65 participants (third-year students majoring in English) were placed into one experimental group (20 students) and one control group (45 students). Two groups were instructed by the same lecturer during one semester of 10 periods (theory, practice and assessment). The experimental group was required to receive the proposed research writing program based on the proposed model, whereas the control group received the existing program through the product approach. After the treatment, the results revealed a significant difference in the means of posttest scores on content, organization, language use, and mechanics use skills in the introduction section. For this reason, we can conclude that the process genre approach positively affects content, organization, language use, and mechanics use skills in the introduction section compared to the product approach.