Teaching Academic Writing to Iraqi Undergraduate Students

Given the traditional writing teaching methods currently prevail in the Arab universities producing an appropriate and efficient academic task or assignment to succeed in academic and social settings in the target English language is particularly challenging to Arab EFL learners. With the growing interest in searching for a more coherent and more effective approach in an attempt to develop their writing competency the researcher proposed to adopt the White and Badger’s (2000) integrated process-genre model. It is believed that the integrated model holds promise to EFL students providing an eclectic and more effective writing pedagogy that attends to their pedagogical needs and thereby better improves their writing competence to achieve well-formed academic argumentation (Hyland 2002 2003; Frith 2006; Goa 2007). The study is significant in several ways. Its key findings are hoped to have some beneficial theoretical and practical insights to add to the emerging EFL writing theory and practice. On the theoretical level it may open up opportunities and provide guidelines for further research in the profession of EFL academic writing theory and practice.