6188

6188

The role of topic interest in and the impact of Process-orientedWriting Approach on the writing quality of Iranian EFLlearners

كارشناسي ارشد

آموزش زبان

March 2006

March 2006

Dr. S. Vaezi

Dr. P. Maftoon

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to investigate the contribution of the process based approach to writing, in comparison with the traditional, product oriented approach, to the writing quality of EFL learners. It was also intended to investigate the role of topic interest on the EFL learners’ writing quality. The questions of the study were (1) whether the process oriented writing has any impact on the writing proficiency of the Iranian EFL university students majoring in English and (2) whether the topic interest factor has any impact on the writing proficiency of Iranian EFL university students majoring in English. To do so, the participants had to be checked in terms of both writing and general language proficiency. In the first stage, a TOEFL test (1995) was administered and 61 subjects who were considered to be one standard deviation above and below the mean were selected. Then the writing pretest was administered, and 42 subjects who were one standard deviation above and below the mean were chosen. They were divided into three groups each with 14 subjects. Two experimental groups (one for process oriented approach and the other one for the role of topic interest) and one control group (the traditional product oriented approach) received their treatment and placebo; the treatment was process oriented writing, along with some pre-writing strategies for the experimental group A, and providing participants with the topics based on their interest in experimental group B. the control group was the traditional product based writing which is used in most writing classes around the world. The study lasted for 14 sessions, and during this period of time, different types of paragraphs were taught. After this period, a writing post test was delivered and the papers were evaluated by 3 raters. After calculating the inter-rater reliability and observing a high correlation of the three sets of scores, the means of the