Genre-Based and Process-Based Approaches to Teaching News Articles

Genre-based and process-based are approaches which claim to improve students’ writing proficiency. This study determined the effect of these approaches on news articles written by 80 students in five aspects: content, accuracy, fluency, appropriateness and intelligibility; it evaluated the significant difference between the pretest and post-test of the processbased (control) and the genre-based (experimental) groups; and examined the significant difference in the writing performance of two groups. The study used t-test for independent samples and t-test for paired samples to analyse the data. Students’ output had showed better improvement in five aspects when exposed to genre-based intervention than those exposed to the process-based approach; there is a significant difference between the pre- and post-tests of the control and experimental groups; and there is a significant difference in the writing performance of the students. Both approaches improved students’ news articles but those exposed to genre approach performed better than those exposed to process-based approach. Adoption of the genre-based approach in the writing course would help improve students’ writing proficiency.