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CHAPTER 3 APPROACHES TO WRITING INSTRUCTION
This chapter will first describe the teaching strategies and elements that scholars believe ought to be present in any writing program that aims to improve the writing of adolescents and young adults. Following this, the different crucial roles that approaches to writing (already mentioned in the previous chapter) is explained in more detail. The process genre approach in writing instruction is explained in particular. Thirdly, the chapter explores the effects of writing intervention programs where the process genre approach was used to enhance academic writing proficiency of EFL/ESL students from diverse educational and social backgrounds. Finally, the effects of context-specific writing materials and the process genre approach in enhancing academic writing proficiency of EFL learners are described with reference to published literature and its relevance to the current study.
Writing strategies and instructional elements of writing
What types of writing intervention works?
Over the past three decades, there has been a dedicated attempt to identify writing strategies and teaching methods that improve the writing performance of elementary school-, high school- and young adult learners. Reports such as those by Graham and Perin (2007a, 2007b), Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara and Harris (2012), Hillocks (1984) and Koster, Tribushinina, De Jong and Van den Bergh (2015) describe the meta-analyses of writing intervention studies, in an attempt to discover which intervention techniques are most successful; and at which level of instruction a strategy or method is likely to be effective. The reason for these analyses seem to be that there is considerable concern (worldwide) that the majority of learners do not become competent writers. As a result,
they struggle to be successful in their school work and later on in life cannot cope with the demands of their studies and their workplace. Such concerns have recently been voiced across the globe; in the USA (Achieve, Inc., 2005; National Commission on
Writing, 2004, 2005), Canada (Dion & Maldonado, 2013), The Netherlands (Henkens,2010, in Koster et al. 2015), France (Boch & Frier, 2012), Egypt (Abd-ElFattah, 2013),Malaysia (Jackson, 2012), Korea (Kim, 2005) and South Africa (Parkinson, Jackson, Kirkwood & Padayachee, 2008; Pineteh, 2014), to name but a few. Of particular interest for this study are conclusions of college instructors that 50% of high school graduates are not prepared for college-level writing demands (Achieve,Inc., 2005), as this is also what the current researcher observed in Oman, and what motivated the present study. One explanation for why young adults don’t meet writing standards is that teachers do not spend enough time teaching this complex skill, and that they do not know which instructional practises work well within their particular context.In an attempt to discover which effective instructional practices are most suitable for teaching writing to adolescent learners, several researchers conducted meta-analyses of true and quasi-experimental studies which were conducted over the past 30 years.Reviews of the writing literature vary – some authors focused on a single writing treatment, such as ‘teaching strategies for planning or revising’ (Graham, 2006; Graham & Harris, 2003), ‘word processing’ (Bangert-Drowns, 1993; Goldberg, Russell, & Cook,2003; Morphy & Graham, 2012) or the ‘process approach’ (Graham & Sandmel, 2011) (all of which were found to improve the writing of typical and struggling writers).Other reviewers adopted a broader approach, in that they examined the effectiveness of multiple writing treatments at specific grades, by calculating the average effect sizes of the various interventions. For example, Hillocks (1986) reviewed writing interventions with students from Grade 3 through to college, while Graham and Perin (2007b) reviewed 123 articles and focused on a variety of interventions (the average effect sizes of these intervention types are included in brackets), including ‘strategy instruction’ (0.82), ‘summarization’ (0.82), ‘peer assistance’ (0.75), ‘setting product goals’ (0.70), ‘word processing’ (0.55), ‘sentence combining’ (0.50), ‘inquiry’ (0.32), ‘prewriting activities’ (0.32), ‘process writing approach’ (0.32), ‘study of models’ (0.25), and ‘grammar instruction’ (0.32) from Grades 4–12.1 The meta-analyses conducted by Hillocks (1986) and Graham and Perin (2007b) were conducted almost two decades apart, but both reviews found that ‘sentencecombining instruction’, ‘emulation of good models’, and ‘inquiry activities’ improved the quality of students’ writing. The reviews further overlapped in that grammar instruction was found to be ineffective in improving the overall quality of writing. Koster et al. (2015) calculated average effect sizes for ten types of interventions used in Grade 4 to 6, and found, in line with other recent reviews (Graham & Perin, 2007b; Graham et al., 2012), that the most effective interventions are (in order of effect sizes): goal setting, strategy instruction, text structure instruction, feedback, and peer assistance. Thus, even though Koster et al.’s analysis was limited to intervention studies from Grade 4 to 6 in a regular educational setting, the findings were similar to that of Graham and Perin (2007), who analysed writing intervention in older learners. In summary, the writing intervention studies conducted in different teaching contexts over the past three decades reported mostly positive results, and the importance of providing learners with effective writing instruction seems non-negotiable. Therefore, the following section will introduce eleven elements of writing instructions that have been found to be effective writing instruction tools in the past.
Abstract
Declaration
Dedication
Acknowledgements
List of tables
List of figures
List of abbreviations
List of contents
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction and background to the study
1.1. Research problem
1.1.1. Existing knowledge gaps in the field of EFL/ESL academic writing
1.1.2. Perceived impact of the contextualized writing instruction
1.2. Theoretical background to the study
1.2.1. Cognitive approaches to writing
1.2.2. Socio-constructivist approaches to writing
1.2.3. Multiliteracies approaches to writing
1.2.4. Writing as a social activity
1.2.5. Writing development
1.3. Context of the research problem
1.3.1. Research questions
1.3.2. Research hypotheses
1.3.3. Objectives of the research
1.3.4. Research methodology
1.4. Outline of the thesis
CHAPTER 2 WRITING IN A FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE
2.1. Definition of writing
2.2. Development of writing
2.2.1. Early writing
2.2.2. Writing in school-aged children.
2.3. The role of linguistic, cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities in writing development
2.3.1. The importance of linguistic abilities in writing
2.3.2. Cohesive devices in written discourse
2.3.3. The importance of cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities and strategies in writing
2.4. Theoretical models of writing
2.4.1. Cognitive process model
2.4.2. More recent cognitive models of writing
2.4.3. Socio-constructivist approaches to writing
2.4.4. A multiliteracies theory of writing
2.4.5. Writing as a social act
2.4.6. A model of language competence
2.4.7. Theories of L2 writing and teaching
2.5. The importance of developing implicit knowledge in L2 writing
2.6. The challenges of writing in a second/foreign language
2.6.1. The challenges faced by Arab learners when writing in English
2.6.1.1. Copula omission
2.6.1.2. Incorrect use of English verb forms
2.6.1.3. Coordination and subordination in Arabic
2.6.1.4. Relative clause formation in Arabic
2.6.1.5. Antecedent and relative clause in Arabic
2.6.1.6. Stylistic differences between Arabic and English
2.7. Conclusion
CHAPTER 3 APPROACHES TO WRITING INSTRUCTION
3.1. Writing strategies and instructional elements of writing
3.1.1 What types of writing intervention works?
3.1.2. Eleven elements of effective writing instruction in adolescents and young adults
3.2. Writing instruction approaches
3.2.1. Model-based approach
3.2.2. Process approach
3.2.3. Genre-based approach
3.2.4. Process genre approach
3.2.4.1. Stages involved in process genre approach
3.3. Arguments against the process genre approach
3.3.1. Empirical evidence on process genre approach in application
3.3.2. The role of the instructor in writing intervention programs in
EFL/ESL contexts
3.4. Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1. Research methodology
4.1.1. General overview of research methodology: quantitative verses qualitative research
4.1.2. The strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research with reference to quasi-experimental research
4.1.3. Overview of the quantitative research framework employed in this study
4.2. Research design
4.2.1. Participants
4.2.2. Quasi-experimental design
4.2.3. Research instruments
4.2.3.1. Data collection tools
4.2.3.2. Intervention tools
4.2.3.3. Analytical tools
4.3. Teaching materials used in the study
4.3.1. Contextually-developed materials
4.3.2. Why are context-specific materials used in the current study?
4.3.3. The design of the writing tasks used for the topic
“Compare and Contrast”
4.3.3.1. Introducing the topic of the chapter
4.3.3.2. Linguistic examples and exercises for comparison
4.3.3.3. More linguistic examples and exercises with comparison
4.3.3.4. Linguistic examples and exercises with models
4.3.3.5. Demonstration of writing a compare-contrast paragraph step by step using a PowerPoint presentation
4.3.4. A writing task based on the process genre approach is introduced
4.3.4.1. Composing stage
4.3.4.2. Re-reading and revising
4.3.4.3. Peer-editing phase
4.3.4.4. Teacher feedback
4.3.4.5. Be the editor
4.4. Research procedure
4.4.1. Ethical considerations
4.4.2. Development of teaching materials and data collection tools
4.4.3. Data collection and scoring
4.4.4. Preliminary data analysis
4.4.4.1. The pre-test, MSE and LEE
4.4.4.2. The questionnaire
4.5. Teaching equipment used in the study
4.6. Pilot study
4.6.1. Research hypothesis
4.6.2. Participants of the pilot study
4.6.3. Procedure
4.6.4. Data collection and scoring
4.6.5. Reliability of tests
4.6.6. Data analysis
4.6.7. Discussion of the pilot study
4.6.8. Conclusion of the pilot study
4.7. Conclusion
CHAPTER 5 RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
5.1. Descriptive statistics of the experimental and control groups
5.2. Findings related to the pre-test
5.2.1. Pre-test performance and within-group gains in writing ability
5.2.2. Correlations
5.3. Findings related to the first research question and two sub-questions related to the first research question
5.3.1. Main effects (of group, class and instructor) on the MSE and LEE
5.3.2. Group and class differences in the MSE and LEE
5.3.3. The role of the instructor
5.3.4. Impact of the social variables on the writing proficiency of students in the experimental group
5.4. Writing development of the control group
5.4.1. Possible reasons for limited improvement in writing made by the control group
5.5. Findings related to the second research question
5.5.1. T-unit analysis of students’ writing accuracy in the pre-test
5.5.2. T-unit analysis of students’ writing fluency in the LEE
5.6. Findings related to the third research question
5.6.1. T-unit analysis of students’ writing in the pre-test and in the LEE
5.6.2. Qualitative analysis of students’ writing fluency
5.6.3. Qualitative analysis of students’ writing accuracy
5.7. Discussion of the findings
5.7.1. Discussion of the findings related to the first research and the two-sub research questions
5.7.2. Discussion of the findings related to the second and third research questions
5.8. Conclusion
CHAPTER 6 THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
6.1. Conceptualising a framework for adapting the process genre approach
6.2. What do we know about the writing development and writing
abilities of learners
6.3. What we do know about approaches to writing?
6.4. Why is it important to consider the process genre approach when designing materials for an L2 intervention program?
6.5. Pedagogical effect of writing multiple drafts
6.5.1. How does the proposed genre model of writing work for an examination setting
6.6. Sustained effect of context-specific materials and the proposed process genre model of writing
6.7. How will the current study close existing gaps in the domain of EFL/ESL academic writing?
6.8. Conclusion
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Conclusion on the first research question
7.3. Conclusion on the second research question
7.4. Conclusion on the third research question
7.5. Limitations of the study
7.6. Significance of the study
7.7. Practical implications and applications for ESL/EFL classroom
7.8. Suggestions for further research
LIST OF REFERENCES
