Effective teaching of the four skills has been the primary concern of research in the TEFL field. Yet, the importance of writing makes it one of the most useful and essential life skills for language learners and teachers alike. Due to its multiple uses and functions, the writing skill enables learners to constantly expand their personal horizons. In actual fact, mastering the writing process contributes to the learners' achievement of their immediate goals, while serving them in the classroom and beyond. Nevertheless, given the complexity of teaching writing skills, teachers have consistently found it to be one of the most difficult and challenging skills to teach, especially in the EFL/ESL contexts. This article aims to illustrate, summarize, and above all synthesize the main approaches followed in teaching writing in ESL/EFL contexts. The article gives an overview of the controlled-to-free approach, the free-writing approach, the grammar-syntax-organization approach, the paragraph-pattern approach, the communicative approach, the product approach, and the process approach, with a special focus on the two main approaches to teaching writing; namely, the process approach involving training student writers to follow the stages of the writing process through different activities. These activities include brainstorming, pairedstudent and small- group language problem-solving activities, free writing, multi drafting, structured peer feedback and teacher-student conferencing. Along with this, the article gives an overview of the product approach to teaching writing. This approach involves teaching writing primarily through model analysis, writing exercises, and structured teacher-student feedback sessions.

Keywords : EFL; ESL;TEFL;Process approach; Product approach; Effectiveness;