The Impact of Different Writing Tasks on Intermediate EFL Learners' Writing Performance

• Published in: Theory and practice in language studies Vol. 4; no. 4; pp. 730 - 735
• Main Authors: Abdali, Abdolreza, Fatemipour, Hamidreza
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Academy Publication Co., LTD 01.04.2014; Academy Publication Co., Ltd
• Subjects: Accuracy; Analysis; English as a second language; English as a second language instruction; English as a second language teaching methods; Essays; Language; Language Proficiency; Language Tests; Learning; Second language writing; Second Languages; Studies; Study and teaching; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Writing skills; Iran
• ISSN: 1799-2591; 2053-0692
• DOI: 10.4304/tpls.4.4.730-735

It is academically believed that conventional methods of teaching writing could not provide satisfactorily the Iranian intermediate English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners with being fully equipped to meet the demand of their authorities while preparing their reports, compositions, essays, papers, assignments, and projects. Therefore, to introduce a desirable approach to teaching writing, researchers usually introduce task based approaches to compensate for such flaws and end such kinds of concerns. So this experimental study tried to investigate the impact of four different pedagogic writing tasks, i.e., Topic Writing (TW), Summary Writing (SW), Graphic Writing (GW), and Picture Writing (PW) on complexity and accuracy of writing performance of aforementioned learners. To this end, 120 subjects were selected as the participants of this experimental study to see which kinds of writing task can ameliorate the current condition well. For implementation the command of the study, altogether 960 written texts as documents of the pre and post test and also treatment were collected and analyzed to pinpoint meticulously the efficacy of these different kinds of writing tasks on subjects' accomplishment in their written production. The results of the study revealed the superiority of SW group for complexity and GW for accuracy of their written productions. Index Terms--Topic Writing (TW), Summary Writing (SW), Graphic Writing (GW), and Picture Writing (PW)