‘What’s the Issue?’: An Analysis of a Reading-to-Write Task within a Korean EFL Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effects a reading-to-write task had on adult Korean EFL learners’ writing performances. The quasi-experiment relied on 105 participants’ expository writing samples detailing what they believed was the most prevalent problem in South Korea. The students were free to choose whichever current issue they wanted to give them the benefits of writing expository essays in the realm of topic familiarity. The students’ scores showed positive results in proper expository formatting, but their grammar accuracy scores had a wide range. Overall, the reading-to-write task helped scaffold the students and positively affected the students’ writing abilities. However, the topics the participants chose to write about were equally important as their writing accuracy. The issues they wrote about varied greatly and showed an authentic perspective on current affairs in South Korea. For future research, I would recommend utilizing a control group that is only taught vocabulary and not exposed to the reading activity. The addition of a control group would allow researchers to compare the students’ writing performances and better understand the benefits of using reading-to-write tasks in an EFL setting.