The Viability of Six-step Method in Teaching Academic Writing in EFL Context

EFL learners, especially from an Arabic background, face many challenges in writing, which among other reasons can be attributed to a different orthography. For this reason, many approaches and methods have been adopted in order to facilitate the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language. One such method is a six-step method, which is also called Blank Page Method (BPM). This method is used in Caledonian College of Engineering among Foundation students who have enrolled for an Academic Writing course. As this method literally consists of six steps: thinking, researching, planning, writing, editing, and presenting, students are expected to master all the steps that are considered as logical strategies that will help them to successfully respond to any academic task. Therefore, this paper concerns with the viability of the six-step method in an EFL context. Interestingly, findings, indicate that this method helps learners to acquire soft skills. On the other hand, due to the assumption implied by the method, i.e., students only need a strategy through which they can organize their work effectively, their writing skill needs much more attention as they struggle to express what they should have achieved through the method. It is in this light that a strategy focusing on the development of a writing skill that will help learners realize the logic of the six-step method is proposed.