This paper adopts the perspective that writing is a recursive, explanatory, and generative process and thus, the objective of practicing writing in classroom is to help the learners develop practical strategies for getting started, drafting, revising, and editing. Consequently, the researchers investigated whether a process-oriented approach to teaching writing, with its emphasis on practicing strategies for each stage of writing, was more successful than a product-oriented approach in improving EFL learners’ writing performance, that is, essay writing.To this end, finally 56 undergraduate students of English translation at Islamic Azad University who were selected based on their performances on a TOEFL and a Test of Written English (TWE) took part in this study. The participants were randomly assigned into control and experimental groups. The control group practiced writing through a product-oriented approach in which the focus was the text. However, the experimental group practiced writing through a process-oriented approach with the focus on teaching writing strategies such as brainstorming, outlining, strategic questioning, free writing, reformulating, and conferencing. The comparison of the mean ratings of the two groups on the writing posttest demonstrated a significant difference between the essay writing of the two groups.This result indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group leading to the conclusion that the process-oriented approach to teaching writing had a significantly more effective impact on EFL learners’ essay writing in an academic context as compared to the product-oriented approach.