The Evaluation of a Teaching Intervention in Iranian EFL Writing


Naghdipour B., Koc S.

ASIA-PACIFIC EDUCATION RESEARCHER, cilt.24, sa.2, ss.389-398, 2015 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 24 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2015
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s40299-014-0191-4
  • Dergi Adı: ASIA-PACIFIC EDUCATION RESEARCHER
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.389-398
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Curriculum design, Process genre approach, Writing pedagogy, EFL, Iran, ESL STUDENTS, ACCURACY, FEEDBACK
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

The curriculum for teaching undergraduate university students in Iran majoring in English generally includes paragraph writing in the second year and essay writing (4-5 paragraphs) in the third year. The first-year course 'Grammar and Writing (I & II)' offered in two consecutive semesters covers grammar only, despite the inclusion of writing in the title, and rarely goes beyond sentence-level writing in support of the newly taught grammar. This one-year delay in focusing on writing per se has been a source of frustration for those students who have to deal with the demanding writing tasks or large-scale written assignments such as extended essays and papers later during their academic or professional life. The current study describes and evaluates a teaching intervention for the potential development of a writing curriculum in first-year writing classes. A pre-test-post-test control group design was employed to compare the effect of the writing instruction within the process genre approach with that of the traditional grammar and sentence-level writing on the fluency, accuracy and quality of students' (n = 68) paragraph and essay writing during two consecutive semesters. Findings from the tests and a focus group discussion revealed that students in the treatment group outperformed their control group counterparts at both paragraph and essay levels. The findings could inspire similar EFL programmes to design a writing curriculum and instruction commensurate with the real needs of their students.