Peer-groups vs individual in essay writing / Daljit Singh

In any language course, the focus on teaching the language is on listening, speaking, reading and writing. Generally, however, the teaching of writing stands out as a major activity in the ESL classroom. This focus on writing is largely because writing appears to be the most difficult skill to teach. According to Richards, ( 1990 : 100 ), learning to write in any language is one of the most difficult tasks a learner encounters and one that few people can be said to fully master. This is especially true for the ITM students for whom writing is a problematic skill. The main problem seems to be that students cannot organize their facts and ideas accordingly. So, for students weak in English, writing is an uphill task. Writing is a skill that needs to be formally taught. (Raimes, 1983:5). In the classroom, one normally teaches writing in composition or essay tasks. Hairston (1982) proposed a new paradigm for the teaching of composition or essay writing. In this paradigm, there is an overall focus on the 'process" in writing essays. According to Hairston (1982) a principled process approach always pays appropriate attention to the end-product. Process-centered approaches to essay writing help students to understand their own composing processes and to build their repertoires for prewriting, (gathering, exploring and organizing raw materials), drafting (structuring ideas into a piece of linear discourse), and rewriting (revising, editing and proofreading).