Abstract:
Academic writing occupies a large proportion of a student's study time and it causes
difficulties to students due to a variety of reasons (Jordan, 1997). The writing modules/
lessons of ESL courses that attempt to instruct students how to set about doing a particular
writing task, as Jordan (1997) observes generally create a 'gap between knowing and
doing'. Further, grammar. which is usually an integral part of an ESL course, does not tend
to have a significant impact on the quality of writing. The process oriented approach has
been greatly criticized and rejected at many occasions while at the same time it has still
been considered useful (sometimes in combination with other approaches) to teach writing
effectively.
This case study was conducted with eight volunteer undergraduates, at the faculty of Arts,
University of Colombo. They were taken through a process of an academic writing task
required in their first academic year. First. a preliminary investigation was conducted to
find out the types of actual writing tasks required. Then the writing process took minimum
6 contact hours of academic writing guidance including peer and teacher feed back. The
first and the final drafts of the writing were compared, questionnaires were dispensed
and interviews of the participants held to test the effectiveness ofthe process oriented
approach in improving the academic writing skills of the participants. The study revealed
that the approach had significant impact on improving the academic writing skills of the
undergraduates while it required a considerable amount of commitment from both the
student and the teacher
