This study was designed to investigate the effects of two methods of teaching written composition (i.e. traditional and process approach) on writing apprehension among ESL students, and also the effect of the process approach on the overall quality and length of their writing. Students enrolled in Written Communication 1 course at the National University of Malaysia were chosen as the subjects of this study. The students had been placed in three groups based on the results of previous courses and for the purpose of this study the top and the bottom groups were selected as the experimental groups and the middle one as the control. From the findings, it was concluded that both methods were successful in reducing writing apprehension, but that the process approach was considerably more effective in achieving this than the traditional approach. Moreover, the subjects in the process/experimental group were found to write better and longer essays than the subjects in the control group taught in the usual way.