scholarly journals Composing strategies employed by high-and low-performing Iranian EFL students in essay writing classes

2022 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 100601
Author(s):  
Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur ◽  
Zahra Kazemi
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-216
Author(s):  
Heriani Dhia Ayu Safitri ◽  
Hamamah Hamamah

EFL writing as the form of productive skill has been the main issue for university students in Indonesia. Therefore, to maintain EFL students to be a good writer, lecturer’s feedback is necessary. The aims of this study were to find out whether there is any relationship between lecturer’s feedback and students’ writing performance, and to find out in what ways the lecturer’s feedback given seen from social constructivism. The researcher employed mixed method which took the data from 60 third-semester students in two Essay Writing Classes, and it was collected by using questionnaire, students’ writing score, and interview guide. The findings showed that correlation coefficient was .273 which indicates that the correlation between lecturer’s feedback and students’ writing performance was positive. While, seen from the significant level, it showed the number .042 which means there was statistically significant relationship between those two variables. The qualitative finding asserted that the lecturers always gave feedback frequently in the two forms, both were oral and written feedback. Other than that, although only one of the lecturers who used elaborated feedback, they both provide the assistance and objectivity during the assessment process. Based on the results of this study the lecturers must give feedback continuously towards students’ work and it should be given together with an explanation. Moreover, the future researcher can find the similar topic from another learning theory such as behaviorism or cognitivism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akiko Nagao

This study examined the progress of English as a foreign language (EFL) writers using the instructional framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and the communities of practice (CoPs) model. The study participants comprised 11 first-year undergraduate students in Japan with intermediate-level English proficiency who were exposed to SFL in a single EFL classroom (CoP). The participants’ genre understanding and meaning-making decisions when writing discussion essays were studied over two semester-long courses. To do so, their developmental changes were analyzed using pre- and post-instructional writing tasks. In particular, their ability to convey interpersonal meaning, such as through the use of modal verbs, was examined and compared between the pre- and post-tasks. To triangulate the findings, participants’ genre awareness in relation to discussion essays was also examined using in-depth qualitative analysis of their self-reflective texts and peer assessments, based on a grounded theory approach. In the pre-writing task, it was apparent that the learners lacked understanding of the components of discussion essay writing. However, analysis of their post-instructional tasks revealed that most had begun to apply the language components required to convey interpersonal meaning in their discussion genre texts. These results suggest that the changes in learner’s genre awareness and knowledge affected the lexicogrammatical features they used when writing discussion essays. Thus, this study concludes that applying the SFL framework to writing instruction enhanced EFL learners’ awareness of textual meaning and their understanding of the function of discussion essay texts.


Author(s):  
Dewi Nopita

Collocation is a natural order of words in which one word should be attached to another in a particular context. For students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL students), using collocations has been recognized to become a problem. This article is going to describe EFL college students’ skill in using collocations in writing essays. 42 students from the same class were selected. They were the 4th semester students of English Education Study Program at Teacher Training and Education Faculty of UMRAH who took Essay Writing course in the academic year 2019/ 2020. The students were given a take-home assignment to write essays. Then, the essays were analyzed to find out the students’ skill in using collocations. It was found that in using collocation in writing essays, 5 students had excellent skill, 14 students had good skill, and 23 students had low skill. The incorrect use of collocations consisted of lexical and grammatical collocations. Finally, it is hoped that these findings could be a useful input for future Essay Writing course.


2012 ◽  
pp. 407-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alnufaie ◽  
Michael Grenfell

This study was part of a PhD research to explore the writing strategies of 121 second-year undergraduate Saudi student writers who are studying English as a foreign language and for specific purposes in one of the Saudi industrial colleges: Jubail Industrial College (JIC). The writing strategies under investigation had been classified into two categories (process-oriented writing strategies and product-oriented writing strategies) based on their instructional philosophies. A strategy questionnaire was designed to collect data. Although JIC writing classes were assumed to be product-oriented as reported by the majority of the participants’ description of their teachers’ writing approach, the results showed that almost all of the participants (95.9%) were mixing the two kinds of strategies. More surprisingly, the top five writing strategies used by the participants were process-oriented.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Naima Hamlaoui ◽  
Sarra Fellahi

Based on the value of teacher-student conferencing practice in writing classes, the study investigates the role of this practice in improving grammatical accuracy in EFL university students’ writing. One particular aim of this study is to help second-year students at Sétif 2 University (Algeria) reduce subject-verb (S-V) disagreement and run-ons in their writing. Ten students took part in this study; they wrote 120 drafts, and were provided with teacher’s oral feedback on their written compositions at the editing stage. Corpora of students’ compositions were examined and instances of errors were counted before each conferencing session for four weeks. The findings reveal that the participants successfully show progress in grammatical accuracy over time to reach elimination for Subject-Verb disagreements and a significant reduction for run-ons.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Fang Li ◽  
Yingqin Liu

This study explores the effects of teaching EFL students to use an outline in their English essays. The researchers maintain that using outlines can raise students’ awareness of different audience expectations embedded in the rhetoric of the target language (English) and culture and can improve their English academic writing. The study was based on a four-week long case study at a university in Xi’an, China, in which 24 Chinese EFL students at the College of Translation Studies participated. A discourse analysis was conducted by comparing the Chinese EFL students’ English essays produced at the beginning of the study with those produced at the end of the study after learning and practicing outlining for writing the English essays. Email inquiries were used for understanding the participants’ viewpoints on learning how to write English essay outlines. The findings reveal that teaching EFL students to use outlining in their English essays is an effective way to help them improve their essay writing. Not only can it enhance the students’ understanding about using the English thesis statements, but it can also help improve the use of related, logical, and specific detailed examples to support the main ideas in their essays. The email inquiries also revealed that the students believe that outline learning helped them to understand the differences between Chinese and English essay writing. The implications of the study for intercultural rhetoric are also discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p32
Author(s):  
Moussa Tankari ◽  
Ayodele Adebayo Allagbé ◽  
Abdou Maiguéro

This paper aimed at measuring the impacts of using the process approach to teach second-year English major students at the English Department of Université de Zinder (henceforth, UZ) essay writing. Drawing on the pre-test-post-test repeated measures design, this study examined the written essays produced by the EFL students before and after the writing class. These pre and post tests were scored based on a criterial fair copy, and the scores were compared by means of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to check whether there were any statistically significant differences between the mean scores. The findings revealed that the process approach had a positive impact on the participants’ essay writing skills. Also, employing Classroom Observation, the article attempted to qualitatively measure student engagement in the writing class. The findings further exuded that the EFL students observed were cognitively involved in the learning activities conducted in the class. Based on the foregoing findings, this study recommends that the process approach to (the teaching of) writing be adopted and used to teach writing in EFL classes across/in Niger.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Kesavan Vadakalur Elumalai

The present study states in the field of teaching EFL students in the process of writing correct feedback in the classroom, the study was conducted to explore the influence of feedback on the students’ writing skill and language abilities in grammar. 30 student participants enrolled in “Advanced Writing” classes were administered to write a short paragraph of their interested topics for 15 weeks they were given separate note books to write essay, letter and a short paragraph of any instant situation and were also asked to write eight essays throughout the semester. At the beginning semester, students were taken pre-test open-ended questionnaire and at end of the semester were taken post- test, both test involves the students’ method of writing and its benefits of feedback. The obtained data showed that the students’ language abilities significantly improved especially in the grammar and vocabulary. The students also reported their satisfaction in the free-writing method which allowed them to learn more on self-expression and organization of ideas.


E-methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 79-83
Author(s):  
Mohammad Amin Mozaheb ◽  
MOSTAFA SHAHIDITABAR

Aim. The present study seeks to investigate the effect of internet use on writing abilities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students studying in an Iranian university. The students of the study have been advised to use the Internet while searching for collocations and new words. They were also told to use grammar checkers while writing essays in English. After a two months’ period, their writing papers had been corrected by two raters. Compared to scores they obtained before the class equipped with new technologies, the students obtained higher scores, showing that the Internet can be used in language learning especially in writing classes where students have difficulties in using native-like words and structures. Methods. The participant of the present study were 28 Iranian university students studying ELT in an Iranian University in the capital Tehran. The students were divided into two classes consisting of 12 students in the experimental group and 16 students in the control group. The mean age of the students taking part in the study was 20. Additionally, according to a TOEFL iBT the level of the English proficiency of the students was 75. To put it other way, utilizing the test, the students were homogenized by the researchers of the study. Results. The results of the study showed that the use of the Internet in EFL classes can boost the writing abilities of EFL learners. In other words, the writing of the students will be improved in case the check different collocations and grammatical points in the Internet.  Moreover, the use of grammar checker soft wares which can be found on the net can pave the way for EFL students to be better writers of English. Conclusions. To conclude, this study suggests that the use of the Internet can be beneficial to EFL learners while improving their writing abilities which can be seen by many scholars studying different skills as important.


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