Ferris categorized the different approaches to Lz composition according to the following four foci,

each of which can be linked to a particular school of thought:

1. Focus on Form and current-traditional rhetoric”, 1966-

o In Lz writing instruction, early emphasis was on the production of well-formed
sentences; a writing task that typifies this paradigm is the controlled composition, a
narrowly focused paragraph- or essay-length assignment designed principally to give
students practice with particular syntactic patterns (e.g. the past tense in English)
and/or lexical forms (Kroll, 1991; Silva, 1990, as cited in Ferris 1998).
o In an extension of this model, “current-traditional rhetoric”(Berlin & Inkster, 1980;
Kaplan, 1967, Silva, 1990; Young, 1978, as cited in Ferries, 1998), students were
also led to generate connected discourse by combining and arranging sentences into
paragraphs based on prescribed formulae. Representative composing tasks might
involve the imitation of specific rhetorical patterns (e.g. exposition, illustration,
comparison, classification, argumentation, etc.) based on authentic and/or student-
generated models.
2. Focus on the writer expressionism and cognitivism, 1976-
o Researchers in this paradigm have attempted to characterize the heuristics and
procedures used by writers as they plan, draft, revise, and edit their texts.
o Classroom procedure resulting from this writer-based orientation include practice
with invention strategies, the creation and sharing of multiple drafts, peer
collaboration, abundant revision, and attention to content before grammatical form.
3. Focus on content and the disciplines, 1986-
o Rather than replacing writing process with the pedagogical material characteristics of
traditional English course (vis, language, culture, and literature), content proponents
assert that ESL writing courses should feature the specific subject matter that ESL
students must learn in their major and required courses (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche,
1898, Horowitz, 1990, Shih, 1986; Snow & Brinton, 1988, as cited in Ferris, 1998).
o In this model, students in adjunct, multiskill, and/or English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) courses are given assistance with the language of the thinking processes and
the structure or shape of content.
o The main emphasis is on the instructor’s determination of what academic content is
most appropriate, in order to build whole courses or modules of reading and writing
tasks around that content” (Raimes, 199, p.411 as cited in Ferris, 1998).
4. Focus on the reader: social constructionism, 1986-
o A reader-focused composition pedagogy is instead founded on the social
constructionist premise that ESL writers need to be apprenticed into one or more
academic discourse communities and that writing instruction should therefore
prepare students to anticipate and satisfy the demands of academic readers.
o Clearly, the reader-focused approach is highly compatible with the content-based
approach both philosophically and methodologically.