Writing Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency among EFL Learners: Inspecting Their Interaction with Learners’ Degree of Creativity

Abstract

Based on the peculiarities of developing second language (L2) writing among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and the significance of studying the way writing skill interacts with EFL learners’ internal factors, the present study attempted to inspect the relationship between EFL learners’ creativity, on one hand, and writing complexity, writing accuracy, and writing fluency, on the other hand. The participants of the study were 185 male and female adult Iranian EFL learners (Mage = 26). The Persian version of O’Neil, Abedi, and Spielberger’s (1992) Creativity Questionnaire, validated by Zaker (2013), was employed in order to estimate participants’ degree of creativity. Participants’ two exploratory and descriptive writings were analyzed through employing the Profile of Larsen-Freeman (2006) by two raters in order to estimate participants’ writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Through running Pearson's Product-moment correlations it was indicated that there are significant correlations between participants’ creativity and writing accuracy, ρ = .84, n = 185, p < .05; creativity and writing fluency, ρ = .77, n = 185, p < .05; and creativity and writing complexity, ρ = .69, n = 185, p < .05. Moreover, running three linear regressions revealed that Creativity can predict 70.1 percent of participants’ writing accuracy (R = .837, R2 = .701); 60 percent of their writing fluency (R = .775, R2 = .600); and 47.5 percent of their writing complexity (R = .689, R2 = .475). The study concludes with a discussion on the findings and stating a number of recommendations for further research.