Traditional approaches to teaching writing have been challenged, and new methods have emerged that reflect the new understanding of this process. This paper compares and contrasts product-based and process-based approaches to teaching writing. Product approaches reflect traditional, teacher-centered approaches to teaching in general, emphasizing an initiation-response-evaluation pattern of discourse between teachers and students. Process approaches view writing as a process that evolves through several stages as the writer discovers and molds meaning and adapts to the potential audience. A corollary to process approaches to writing is that writing is a social activity. However, in the typical writing class, students as responders have little opportunity to explore social roles through their writing. The dialogue journal (DJ) is a possible solution to the limitations of the classroom. A variation of DJs, secret friend journals (SFJs), is explored in a study with first year writing students at a college in Japan. SFJs share some advantages of teacher-student DJs and have additional advantages, for example, decreased demands on teachers' time and increased interest in the assignments due to the anonymity of a partner's identity. (Contains 18 references.) (JP)