A Comparative Study of the Effect of Reading-to-write, Writing-only Tasks on Iranian EFL Learners’ Discourse Features

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Mohammad Bakhshi ¹ , Atefeh Nasrollahi Mouziraji ^{2 *} , Hamed Barjesteh ³

1 - Department of English Language and Literature, Ayatollah Amoli Branch, Islamic Azad University, Amol, Iran
2 - Department of English language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Ayatollah Amoli branch, Amol, Iran
3 - Department of English language and Literature, Islamic Azad University, Ayatollah Amoli branch, Amol, Iran

Received: 2023-07-19 Accepted : 2023-11-07 Published : 2024-08-13

Keywords: Discourse features, Reading-to-write, Writing-only tasks,

Abstract :

This study attempted to evaluate the comparative effects of reading-to-write and writing-only tasks on the discourse characteristics of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In order to accomplish this goal, sixty EFL learners were chosen by OPT. These individuals were then split up into two experimental groups, reading-to-write and writing-only, respectively. Before and after receiving the therapy, the writing pre-and post-tests were given to both groups. In addition, ten out of thirty participants in the reading-to-write group completed the semi-structured interview. The findings showed that reading-to-write activities substantially impacted the writing fluency, syntactic complexity, and grammatical accuracy of the post-test completed by EFL students. The findings also revealed that writing-only activities substantially impacted the EFL learners' writing posttest performance in the areas of writing fluency and grammatical accuracy. Analyzing the discourse features of the writing post-test revealed a sizeable gap between students who had learned to write by reading to write and those who had learned to write only. The findings of the qualitative study showed that the vast majority of students were pleased with the implementation of reading-to-write activities in the various classroom settings and found it was effective in enhancing students’ level of writing ability. This study has some implications for teachers and syllabus designers to design appropriate integrative reading to write tasks.