PROMOTING THE SIX-TRAIT MODEL OF WRITING INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT AS AN IMPROVEMENT TO THE WRITING PROCESS IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA

Writing is a communication skill which remains the fulcrum of scholarship. However, despite the various models of writing available to second language teachers and students over the past decades, the ability to write with a high degree of proficiency remains a challenge. One of the methods of writing – Process writing – gained wide acceptance as an effective composing process. Much later, still not being satisfied with the quality of students’ writing, teachers of the North Western Education Board in America, refined the method creating an analytical model in order to further improve writing instruction and evaluation at all levels. This paper is making a case towards encouraging Nigerian essay writing teachers to rethink the writing process in terms of the Six-Trait Model for Writing Instruction and Assessment for use at the junior secondary level. By  providing an in depth explanation of how the model works, especially with its emphasis on sentence fluency and writing conventions, the paper suggests that  the additional information and teaching strategies provided by the  model may be a better solution to   the writing needs of  students in Nigerian schools.