Abstract

• In the middle and high schools in Myanmar, the role of essay writing has been changed from lessons to be practiced to lessons to be memorized because of the teaching practices which focus on the completed essay and neglects how students write essays. So, a systematic approach to teaching writing is needed in Myanmar Language teaching to promote the students’ writing skill. This study is concerned with the adaptation and adoption of process approach in teaching writing. To investigate the effect of using process approach to teaching writing, an experiment was conducted. The participants were (394) Grade Nine students from four selected schools in Yangon Region. In this study, one of the quasiexperimental designs, non-equivalent control group design, was used. At the beginning of the study, a pretest was administered to know whether there were significant differences in writing skill between the experimental and control groups. And then, the experimental groups were taught writing through the proposed process approach by using the learning materials developed by the researcher. The control groups were taught through teacher-led instruction. The treatment period was from August, 2016 to November, 2016. At the end of the treatment period, both the control and experimental groups were compared by a posttest. According to the statistical data obtained from the posttest, it was found that there were significant differences between the groups who were instructed through the proposed process approach and the groups who were instructed through teacher-led instruction in each school on the scores of writing achievement. Therefore, it can be interpreted that the proposed process approach model and learning materials positively contributed to the improvement of students’ writing skill. It is believed that this study can solve the problems teachers and students are facing in teaching and learning essay writing.