The Evaluation of a Teaching Intervention in Iranian EFL Writing

Abstract

The curriculum for teaching undergraduate university students in Iran majoring in English generally includes paragraph writing in the second year and essay writing (4–5 paragraphs) in the third year. The first-year course ‘Grammar and Writing (I & II)’ offered in two consecutive semesters covers grammar only, despite the inclusion of writing in the title, and rarely goes beyond sentence-level writing in support of the newly taught grammar. This one-year delay in focusing on writing per se has been a source of frustration for those students who have to deal with the demanding writing tasks or large-scale written assignments such as extended essays and papers later during their academic or professional life. The current study describes and evaluates a teaching intervention for the potential development of a writing curriculum in first-year writing classes. A pre-test–post-test control group design was employed to compare the effect of the writing instruction within the process genre approach with that of the traditional grammar and sentence-level writing on the fluency, accuracy and quality of students’ (n = 68) paragraph and essay writing during two consecutive semesters. Findings from the tests and a focus group discussion revealed that students in the treatment group outperformed their control group counterparts at both paragraph and essay levels. The findings could inspire similar EFL programmes to design a writing curriculum and instruction commensurate with the real needs of their students.