Pre-writing Activities Research Articles

Individual and Collaborative Computerized Mind Mapping as a Pre-Writing Strategy: Effects on EFL Students’ Writing

This study examined the effects of computerized concept mapping on EFL students’ essays in terms of content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics. The theoretical framework was based on writing-as-process approach. Explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used to collect data. Quasi-experimental research data was collected from 45 students who were assigned to two treatment groups as individual and collaborative computerized concept mapping and control group. All participants completed a survey before and after the treatment. The experimental groups were trained on the use the mapping tool. The essays were scored according to Jacobs et al.’s (1981) rubric. The quasi-experimental phase was followed by semi-structured interviews. The results suggested the individual-mapping group performed better than the control group in terms of content and organization in all essay tasks while the collaborative-mappers outperformed control group in the second task. The results of semi-structured interviews revealed that learners had positive experiences using computerized concept mapping as a pre-writing activity in EFL context and their attitudes towards writing were quite positive.

The Effects of Referential Questions in Pre-writing Activities on Students’ In-class Participation and Written Production

Types of teacher questions play a crucial role in students’ foreign language development. Among teacher questions, referential questions asked to enable students to provide data not known by the teacher, express their views and exchange personal information and ideas are particularly important as they can affect students’ in-class participation and language production. Writing is a complex production process and pre-writing activities are defined to be an essential step to improve writing performance. In these activities, referential questions may act as effective means to encourage students’ in-class participation and written production. However, referential questions in pre-writing activities in English language teaching have not yet been investigated. This study aims to investigate the forms and functions of referential questions in pre-writing activities and teacher and student views about their effects on students’ in-class participation and written production. 63 English language learners and their writing instructor participated in the study. The data were collected by classroom observations and teacher and student interviews and analysed via conversation and thematic analysis. The findings showed that referential questions were used in a variety of forms and had productive, communicative, pedagogical and motivational functions. The teacher and students emphasized that referential questions had substantial impacts on in-class participation and written production. They were reported to attract students’ attention, enhance their motivation to speak, promote oral participation and lead to complex responses. Also referential questions were stated to provide guidance for the production of written outputs generated with the help of collaboratively constructed content in the classroom.

Strategies for Overcoming University Researchers’ Writer’s Block

This paper reveals the importance of overcoming writer’s block for university researchers as second language writers. The idea and materials for the paper come from the experience of the Center for Academic Writing “Impulse” at the University of Tyumen, Russia. The target audience of the Center is the university faculty and researchers who have a lack of time to immerse in the writing process, rather they mainly want to obtain an immediate tangible result. However, our research shows that they often get frustrated by their inability to complete their writing piece because they get stuck at different stages of the writing process. For example, some people find it difficult to finish their papers, or others fade away in the middle, but the main problem is to start writing. Thus, they face writer’s block which can be referred to moderate blockage. To overcome the block, we offer the researchers a variety of activities during courses and special projects. This paper describes two strategies: classroom intervention including mainly pre-writing activities, such as freewriting, looping, word association, aimed to overcome the fear of a white page, and individualized intervention based on the project entitled “Drop in & Reboot your Writing”. The project comprised 10-20 weekly individual meetings lasting for 30 minutes and aiming at dealing with a particular writing issue. The individual approach to each participant led to a better understanding of the causes of writer’s block and finding the cures. These strategies aim to develop researchers’ positive attitude to writing, to enable them to boost their awareness of the writing process in receiving the desired results, and build confidence as second language writers.

IMPROVING ACQUISITION OF LEARNING THROUGH PEER-MEDIATED SUPPORT STRATEGIES IN TEACHING RESEARCH

The conduct of an action research enabled teachers to assess the research capabilities of the students specifically in writing the different parts of the paper. The aim of the study is to improve the learning acquisition of students through peer-mediated support strategies in teaching research. The participants of this study were the Senior High School students taking Research Project as a subject. A pre-writing activity was administered to identify the needs of the students in writing the different parts of the research. A learning plan integrating the use of the Peer-mediated Support Strategies (PMSS) such as classroom-wide peer tutoring, peer support arrangement and lunch bunches as interventions, was developed to improve the performance of the students-participants in writing research. A post-writing activity was given as well to the participants to find out if there were significant improvements in their writing capability. The study used methodological triangulation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse and compare the results of the pre-writing and post-writing scores. A focus group discussion and teachers’ observation were conducted to support the result of the analysis made. The result was found to be significant proving PMSS to be an effective strategy in improving acquisition of learning. KEYWORDS: Research writing, acquisition of learning, peer-mediated support strategies, peer assisted learning, classroom-wide tutoring, peer-support arrangement, lunch bunches

Collaboration before Writing: Exploring How Student Talk Contributes to English L2 Written Narratives

Previous studies of prewriting discussions have focused narrowly on classifying the type of student talk e.g., content, organization, language) that occurred during a short planning period. However, less is known about how students’ interactions unfold across multiple prewriting discussions in an entire lesson. To gain further insight into the relationship between collaborative talk and individual writing, this case study explores how two ESL students, Lendina and Mateo, interact during three prewriting activities in one lesson. Data sources include transcripts of the students’ discussions, their narrative texts, and perceptions from the students, their teacher, and an observer. Findings revealed that their discussions were characterized by collaboration (e.g., equality, mutuality, and shared epistemic stance), with each activity contributing concepts and lexical expressions to the students’ narratives. Implications for instructors interested in integrating prewriting discussions into their classes are provided.

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ STRATEGIES IN EXPLORING IDEAS OF PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES IN WRITING CLASS

This study investigates university students’ strategies in pre-writing activity, what students usually do to explore their idea before writing an academic paper. The participants of this study were students of writing class majoring English Education Department at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya. An exploratory mixed methods design was employed by interviewing students in writing class about the strategy they used before writing and administering questionnaire respondents. The findings showed that students used several strategies to enrich the idea before writing, most students used draft on the essay, and the draft was used to collect the idea so that they could arrange their writing into a good structure. This implies the need for future research to investigate more about the strategy they use not only in pre-writing but also the used strategy to solve their problem in a writing activity.

TEACHING WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT BY USING STORY PYRAMID STRATEGY FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Writing is an important skill that is needed in order to share and convey ideas into written form. As a writer, the students should be able to give their thoughts through writing. However, many students have difficulties in writing the text and they do not know how to generate adn develope their ideas. It is because they are confused to develope their ideas into a paragraph. That is why this paper is conducted on order to explain how to use Story Pyramid Strategy in teaching writing narrative to senior high schools students. Story pyramid is pre-writing activity that is done before writing. It is an outline that contains some instructions to describe the important information from a story such as the main character, the setting and the major events in the plot. It means that this strategy assists students to produce and arrange the ideas clearly before they start writing. it believed that this strategy can help many students in improving their writing ability.

Theoretical Analysis of Pre-writing Activities in College English Writing

The low efficiency in the teaching of writing makes us examine again the traditional teaching approach we have been applying. This article tries to explore an effective way to improve the teaching of writing by implementing the first stage of process approach --- prewriting. The analysis of theoretical framework of this approach provides a powerful theoretical support and guidance for the teaching and research on pre-writing in college English writing.

THE EFFECT OF PAIR AND GROUP WORK IN COLLABORATIVE PRE-WRITING DISCUSSION ON STUDENTS’ WRITING QUALITY

In foreign language writing classroom, collaborative pre-writing activity is one of common activities used by students to help them generate and evaluate their ideas before they write a text. A teacher usually assigns students to work in pairs or groups to accomplish the activity. However, whether the number of participants in collaborative pre-writing activity influenced the quality of students’ writing or not is still mysterious that need to be investigated further. This study tried to investigate the effect of the number of participants in collaborative pre-writing discussion on students’ writing quality. 30 participants from non-English department who were studying English as English Specific Purposes were involved in this study. They were required to write an explanation paragraph after being given a certain treatment. The result of the study revealed that the quality of students’ writing was not affected by the number of participants in collaborative pre-writing discussion. Therefore, the implication of the study is teacher can assign students to work collaboratively in pre-writing activity with two or more students. However, some factors need to be considered by teacher such as students learning style, the nature of task, etc.

쓰기 전 활동과 글쓰기 능력의 상관성

이 글에서는 대학 글쓰기 교육에서 쓰기 전 활동에 대한 학습자의 이해도와 글쓰기 능력의 상관성을 탐색하였다. 쓰기 전 활동이란 완성된 형태의 글쓰기 이전에 이루어지는 일체의 활동으로 주제 잡기, 자료 찾기, 개요 쓰기 등이 이에 해당한다. 구성주의 학습 이론에 힘입어 오늘날의 글쓰기 교육은 과정 중심의 접근법이 일반화되고 있다. 글쓰기 교육을 과정 중심으로 접근한다는 것은 쓰기의 결과보다는 과정 자체의 중요성을 강조한다는 의미이다. 이러한 문제의식을 바탕으로 이 글에서는 다양한 수업 활동에 대한 학습자 개개인의 평가 자료를 바탕으로 학습자들의 쓰기 전 활동에 대한 인식 수준을 파악하고, 이를 다시 그들의 글쓰기 결과물과 연결하여 둘 사이의 상관성을 탐색하였다. 특히 별도로 치른 학기말 시험에서 쓰기 전 활동에 대해 자세히 서술하는 문항을 주고, 이에 대한 학습자들의 답안을 분석함으로써 쓰기 전 활동에 대한 학습자들의 인식 수준을 파악하는 중요한 지표로 삼았다.BR 이상의 연구를 통해 얻은 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 글쓰기 능력과 글쓰기 과정에 대한 인지 수준은 하위권 학생일수록 더 뚜렷한 상관성을 보였다. 둘째, 상위권, 하위권의 구분없이 수업 중 과제 해결력과 글쓰기 능력의 상관성은 전체적으로 매우 높은 상관성을 갖고 있다. 셋째, 학생들은 대체적으로 성찰적 글쓰기보다 논증적 글쓰기에서 쓰기 전 활동과의 상관성을 더 분명하게 보여주었다. 이러한 경향은 점수가 높은 그룹의 학생들일수록 더욱 두드러졌다. 이러한 결과를 통해 글쓰기 과정에 대한 교수 학습은 글쓰기 능력이 낮은 학생과 높은 학생들에게 모두 유용하지만, 중하위권 학생들에게 조금 더 도움이 되며, 문제해결능력을 키울 수 있는 다양한 수업 방식을 설계하는 것이 전체적으로 학생들의 글쓰기 능력을 향상시키는 데에 유용함을 알 수 있었다.

The Effects of Translanguaging in Discussion as a Prewriting Activity for Writing in a Second Language

The Effects of Translanguaging in Discussion as a Prewriting Activity for Writing in a Second Language

Taming the Writing Demons: Overcoming Writing Apprehension

Taming the Writing Demons: Overcoming Writing Apprehension

The Contribution of Facebook Group in Writing Activity

This study investigated the contribution of Facebook Group (FG) in writing activity and the students’ perception of using FG in writing activity. It is qualitative research - case study. It used purposive sampling technique involving three students at eleventh grade of Senior High School. Interview with open-ended was distributed as the technique of collecting data to allow the participants to explore their ideas. Thus, the data was analyzed by content analysis in which the data passed the process of data reduction, data display and conclusion and verification. The finding revealed that Facebook group just has contribution in pre-writing activity while the others’ activities were done in the classroom. Then, through the interview, the students’ stated that they felt comfortable in expressing their ideas through Facebook group, thus, they also felt motivated when their friends’ gave their comments on their statements.

An example of an L2-writing strategy: NOVSKEV

In this study the effect of a writing strategy for L2-writing is tested experimentally. 10th grade students (N = 67) took part in a writing experiment in writing German as a second language. In the experimental condition students were taught to pay attention to pre-writing activities (think and organize), find the right words in German, and post-writing activities (evaluate and revise). Students in both the experimental and control condition completed two texts as pre- and post-test. All texts were rated holistically as well as with an analytic scoring scheme. Results show that in the experimental condition students wrote (on average) better texts than in the control condition, when rated holistically. For the analytic ratings improvement was statistically significant for the categories Content, Vocabulary and Conventions. For other categories (Syntax, Grammar (Verb and Case), Spelling and Punctuation) no effect of the experimental program could be shown.

Using Twine to Deliver a Grammar-Linked Creative Writing Assignment in a Hybrid ESL Course


 
 
 In recent years developmental education began shifting from a reliance on high-stakes testing in reading and writing to a multiple measures model for assessment. The multiple-measures model, which opens up a whole new array of writing opportunities for English Language Learning students, also aligns with good practices in course design, in the hybrid modality. This article describes a Grammar Adventure Game that two faculty members at Hostos Community College (CUNY), developed using Twine. The Grammar Adventure game served both as an alternative to a traditional grammar assignment, and as a pre-writing activity for a creative writing assignment, in an intermediate English as a Second Language (ESL) course. The authors discuss students’ experience using this gamified approach, and why it works in the hybrid environment.
 
 

Technology-Assisted Mind Mapping Technique in Writing Classrooms: An Innovative Approach

In language acquisition research, four important language skills form complete communication components consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing. To aid in the acquisition of these core language skills, mind maps can be used in a multitude of ways, for instance to generate, to visualize, to structure and also to organize ideas. Other than these, mind mapping techniques can be employed to study and collect new information, to solve difficulties, to make decisions and finally to write purposefully. The present study was carried out to investigate the multipronged approach that can be adopted to inspire and support students who want to use mind mapping techniques in their English language writing classrooms. In this paper, we review previous work in this area and highlight present studies that explore the implementation of technology-assisted mind mapping techniques in the pre-writing stage. The results of the study reported in this paper indicate that attitudes of writing students became significantly more positive toward the adoption of technology-assisted mind mapping techniques. This is particularly true with reference to their pre-writing activities, in order to enhance their writing skills in ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms in the Malaysian education context.

Teaching English Language at SSC Level in Private Non-Elite Schools in Pakistan: Practices and Problems

<em>English language is taught as a compulsory subject up to graduate level in Pakistani educational system. Despite studying English for over 14 years, majority of students coming from non-elite schools, lack required command in English language skills to pursue their higher education and professional careers. With this background in mind, the current research focused on teaching English reading and writing skills and the problems faced while teaching these skills at Secondary School Certificate (SSC) level in private non-elite schools in Karachi. The sample of the study comprised 20 SSC level students, 12 SSC level English language teachers of non-elite private schools and 5 student notebooks. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires, group interviews and notebook analysis. Data were examined using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that teaching English language reading practices include reading the text aloud, translating the chapter, providing the central idea and meanings of difficult words to the students. The major problems faced by the teachers in teaching reading skills are learners’ lack of interest in reading, lack of concentration and low reading comprehension skills. The study also revealed practices of teaching writing skills such as provision of model texts and relevant vocabulary items. The major problems while teaching writing skills are lack of pre-writing activities, learners’ deficient command over vocabulary, grammar, spellings and punctuation, lengthy syllabus and limited time.</em>

Students’ Awareness and Perceptions towards “Pre-Writing Stage” as a Strategy in Writing Directed Essay

Realizing the importance of writing strategies, there are numbers of researches conducted in figuring which of the proposed models is the most effective strategy in conducting writing tasks. In writing stages, one of the most basic and important stages is “pre-writing stage”. Pre-writing stage is known for its efficiency in constructing a well-organized essay regardless of the types of essay questions. The purpose of this study is to explore students’ perceptions towards pre-writing stage as a strategy in writing directed essay. Thirty students were selected from an academy known as Menara Gading which is located in Pahang, Malaysia. Based on the findings, it could be observed that students do use pre-writing stage but they are not aware that it is considered as a strategy in writing directed essay. This is because the students were not aware of the term used for the first few steps before writing was called “pre-writing stage”. As far as the students’ perception is concerned, it could be concluded that students have positive perception on the pre-writing strategy as the strategy helps them to be more confident in writing. In a nutshell, teachers should ensure that students are aware of the importance of “pre-writing stage” and conduct interesting pre-writing activities which are helpful, fun, time-saving and effective in order to enhance students’ skills in writing.

The Effects of Pre-writing Activity Focusing on the Content Generation upon High School Students English Writings Competence

The Effects of Pre-writing Activity Focusing on the Content Generation upon High School Students English Writings Competence

Social Media Facilitated English Prewriting Activity Design and Evaluation

Social media can benefit English as a foreign language (EFL) learning, but learners need a deliberate approach to pursue deeper learning. To this end, the aim of this study was to design a prewriting activity using a mobile-based concept map to assess participants’ writing performance in different aspects of writing. The designed prewriting activity comprised (1) structuralized private knowledge, (2) explicit knowledge affordance, and (3) consolidated social activities. To evaluate the effects of the prewriting activity, an EFL prewriting experiment was conducted. In this experiment, 80 participants in a high school in Taiwan were evenly assigned to a control or experimental group. The participants’ writing essays and learning perceptions were collected, and the analysis results indicated that (1) a significant difference was found in the aspects of communicative quality, linguistic accuracy, and linguistic appropriacy, and (2) the questionnaire statistics aligned with similar findings that the prewriting activity helped learners’ writing from communicative quality and social collaboration perspectives.