جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « writing strategies » در نشریات گروه « ادبیات و زبان ها »

This study aimed to explore the combined impacts of critical thinking and dynamic Assessment on enhancing the writing performance of Iranian EFL learners, specifically focusing on teaching writing strategies. We selected 80 intermediate-level participants from a pool of approximately 200 language learners at an accredited institute (Gooyesh). These participants were divided equally into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group (EG) received writing strategies through the application of critical thinking principles and dynamic assessment. The control group (CG) received writing strategies through traditional methods without receiving critical thinking or dynamic assessment principles. The two groups underwent a writing pre-test to assess their initial writing skills, and after the treatment, to measure their writing improvement, they took a post-test using the same evaluation criteria as those of the pre-test. Then, appropriate statistical tools were employed to gauge the participants' writing progress as a result of the instructional methods. The results indicated that integrating dynamic assessment and critical thinking strategies significantly improved participants' written communication skills. These findings hold promise for EFL instructors, curriculum designers, and material developers.

The present paper examines the theory of conceptual metaphor, using the theoretical framework of the cognitive writing model to improve EFL learners’ writing creativity and metacognitive writing awareness. To that end, 120 male and female EFL Bachelor-of-Arts (BA) students majoring in English language from Foreign Languages Center at Islamic Karaj Azad University in Iran voluntarily participated in this research study. The participants were randomly assigned into two equal groups, with the experimental group receiving the cognitive instruction and the control group the traditional instruction. Using a two-way analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) procedure, the researchers assessed the posttest scores of both groups. The results of the analysis indicated that the experimental group significantly enhanced its scores in the posttest of metacognitive writing strategies and writing creativity compared to the control group. Findings suggest that writing is not drafting and rewriting prefabricated patterns, but it is a recursive and interactive process in which writers attempt to construct meaning and create original ideas using real-life experiences. Findings also imply that conceptual metaphors are powerful literary devices for improving EFL learners’ idea generation, writing creativity, and metacognitive writing awareness which deserve to be taught at universities.

The effect of assessment types (self, peer, and teacher) on the EFL writing strategies development was examined in this study. Sixty upper-intermediate EFL learners at Qazvin Islamic university in four groups (one control and three experimental groups) were studied. One-way ANOVA checked homogeneity of the groups prior to the treatments and, then, the participants’ records and diaries were employed to gather data. Explanatory and descriptive analyses were implemented to analyze and classify the strategies the EFL learners picked up. This provided the type, frequency, and percentage of the strategies the participants mostly employed. The results revealed that the experimental groups, namely, self-assessment group, peer assessment group, and teacher assessment group employed more cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies than the control group. Affective strategies were more appealing to the control group. Focusing on the diction of the words, concentrating on the complex structures used by different writers, and making use of the structures the participants became interested in or found suitable were the most frequently referred to strategies. Teaching strategies the participants more picked up in this study might enhance EFL learners’ writing development at TEFL centers.

A challenge for many postgraduate students is to move from the state of novice observers to those of professional contributors of a particular discourse community. They need to develop certain skills, practices, and competences, the demonstration of which is mostly through writing, called disciplinary writing expertise (DWE). DWE can be examined from two aspects of nature and development. This study aims at proposing a model of disciplinary writing expertise including both the competencies of DWE and factors developing these components. In-depth interviews with 28 postgraduate students of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) were collected and research papers written by these students were used to collect data. Based on substantive considerations and the results of the content analysis, five subcomponents of DWE were identified including strategic, genre, rhetorical, subject matter and discourse community knowledge components. Meanwhile, writing strategies and goal orientations were identified as two important factors influencing the development of disciplinary writing proficiency in a foreign language context. Two questionnaires were made and piloted to endorse these two factors among 538 postgraduate TEFL students. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we proposed a model to show the relationship among these two factors and the components of DWE. The results showed that those who followed mastery goals used all types of writing strategies to develop different subcomponents of DWE. On the other hand, those who followed context and career-directed goals used strategies to develop rhetorical knowledge mostly.

In recent years، language learning research has been paying more attention to the factors that may affect the choice by language learners of language learning strategies in general and writing strategies in particular to enhance their own learning. Given the socio-cognitive nature of the act of writing، as de Larios et al (2002) note، both writer -internal and external factors have been reported to influence the deployment of writing strategies. Personality type، as one of the influential internal factors among others، is the focus of the present study، which intended to investigate English language learners’ writing strategies with reference to their personality types at different universities in Iran. To this end، a writing strategy questionnaire was employed to tap into the memory، cognitive، compensation، metacognitive، social، and affective strategies of 210 participants. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire was utilized to identify the self-reported personality types of Iranian EFL learners. The analysis of the participants’ perceptions demonstrated a significant relationship between writing strategies and personality types. Furthermore، it was found that metacognitive and cognitive strategies were the most frequently used strategies and memory strategies the least frequently used ones as reported by the participants.

This study aims to examine the strategies utilized by eleven postgraduate students in an EFL university context in their attempts to acquire the textual practices of their discipline. First- and second-year MA students, one Ph.D. student as well as individuals who had completed their MA programs in TEFL took part in interviews in order to elicit the strategies they used when they endeavored to write their discipline-specific writings, such as articles, proposals and theses. The results revealed that the participants utilized socio-affective, communication and resourcing strategies more than cognitive strategies. However, they ignored metacognitive strategies, which might be due to a lack of conscious awareness of certain writing genres in the field. Social apprenticeship strategies were not considered to be of great importance by participants. Students were highly dependent on their instructors for feedback, though without bearing any sense of collaboration with them or their peers. The role of the explicit instruction of metacognitive genre awareness as well as the provision of an atmosphere of collaboration among students has been emphasized.