The Effect of Strategies-Based Instruction on the Improvement of EFL Learners’ Writing Quality

Abstract

The present study draws primarily on Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural approach and sets out to explore the effect of instruction of sociocultural writing strategies on the improvement of EFL learners' quality of writing. The study was conducted with two EFL writing classes randomly assigned to an experimental (N = 22) and a control group (N = 21) during a university term. Although the students in both classes worked in groups while practicing writing, only the experimental group was continuously taught to mediate their writings through different strategies and contextual mediations based on Engstrom's (1987) activity theory. The students' individual writing scores at the beginning and at the end of the experiment were compared, and the results convincingly proved that the experimental group made significantly more improvement in their writing ability than did the control group. The analysis of the recorded students' interactions in both groups revealed that the experimental group used almost all the sociocultural strategies while practicing writing, whereas the control group made a very limited use of only some of these strategies.

Developing Strategy Use and Language Performance through Implicit Strategy Training

“…A similar study by Khonamri and Ahmadi (2015), which was also utilized an explicit training, showed a remarkable improvement after utilizing explicit metacognitive strategy training in listening. Many other studies have also provided evidence that strategy training in learning a foreign language have affected either the use of the trained strategies or students' language performance (Chen, 2010;Rahimi and Noroozisiam, 2013;Zhang and Seepho, 2013). A study by Kavani and Amjadiparvar (2018) has also proved that strategy training in language learning played an important role in increasing motivation and self regulated learning.…”

“…In implicit strategy training, students are trained to use learning strategies with an absence of conscious efforts to learn the rules of the learning strategies, while in explicit strategy training, students are trained to use learning strategies consciously to apply the strategies to acquire the target language (Robinson, 1997). A study by Rahimi and Noroozisiam (2013) which involved university students in Iran developed an explicit strategy training for teaching writing. In their training the students were taught sociocultural strategies and the result of the experimental class was then compared with the result of the class which was not taught the sociocultural strategies.…”

A Comparative Analysis of Writing Strategies and Performance in a Saudi University

“…A similar experimental study was also performed by Rahimi and Noroozisiam's (2013) on the EFL learners present in Iran. For this, the sociocultural strategies were adopted by the teachers where it showed that students writing performance in terms of cohesion, and organizing increased when the teacher use strategies with regard to their culture.…”

Effect of Graphic Organizer and Instructional Scaffolding on Argumentative Essay Writing Performance: A Critical Analysis

“…A wide range of studies has looked into the impact of instructional scaffolding using various strategies on students' writing. Among those studies were teacher prompting techniques in writing performance (Allenger, 2015); strategies-based instruction on learners' writing quality (Rahimi & Noroozisiam, 2013). Other related studies include direct instruction and strategy modelling on students' writing development (López, Torrance, Rijlaarsdam & Fidalgo, 2017), scaffolding based instruction in writing performance (Obeiah & Bataineh, 2015), scaffolded instruction to optimize learning (Larkin, 2002) and Toulmin Model of Argument on the problem-solving strategies (Wilson, 2014).…”