Effects of Product Process and Genre Approaches of Teaching Writing on Senior Secondary School Students’ English Composition Achievement in Edo State

This study was undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of three approaches to teaching writing (product, process and genre approaches) on Senior Secondary School Students' English composition achievement. The research design adopted for the study was the (Pretest-Posttest Non-Equivalent Control Group) Quasi-Experimental Design. The population of the study comprised all the nineteen thousand two hundred and eighty-eight (19,288) students in Senior Secondary Schools in Edo South Senatorial District. Using the stratified sampling procedure, four hundred and fifty-seven (457) students in Edo South Senatorial District (Oredo, Egor, Ikpoba Okha, Uhumwonde, Ovia North East, Ovia South East, and Orhiomwon Local Government Areas) of Edo State formed the sample of this study. The instrument used for data collection was an Achievement Test in Composition Writing (ATCW) adopted from the West African Examination Council (West African Examination Council, 2013) past composition questions. The validity of the instrument was not determined by the researcher. Rather, the researcher relied on the fact that the West African Examination Council conducts standardized examinations which have been subjected to content validity. The reliability was carried out to ensure that there was a degree of agreement or consistency in the scores given by the rater. For this purpose, the scripts of the writing achievement test of twenty students were rated twice by the researcher within an interval of two weeks. The intra-rater reliability of the scores which was calculated using Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) yielded an ICC of 0.965. The data collected were analyzed using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA) statistics. Five hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that the genre approach was the most effective approach in the teaching of composition writing in Senior Secondary Schools, as students taught with this approach performed best in composition writing, specifically, in the areas of expression, content, organization and mechanical accuracy. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that the genre approach to teaching composition writing is superior to both the process and product approaches. The study recommended, among others, that English Language teachers should be given formal training in the use of genre approach to teaching composition writing for enhancing students' achievement in English Language composition writing. Thus, it is pertinent that workshops, seminars, conferences and other forms of in-service training be organized for English Language teachers to acquaint them with the use of the genre approach in English Language composition writing.