The present study examines the effects of different writing instructions on improving EFL young learners’ writing ability. In this section, the major findings will be summarized, compared to the hypotheses proposed in the second chapter, and discussed according to the three research questions.
Research question 1: Which of the following pedagogical instructions effectively enhance
young EFL learners’ writing ability? Task-based instruction, processing instruction, or the eclectic instruction?
The study is a research on teaching young EFL learners how to write. The results indicated that all the three writing instructions were effective in enhancing the participants’
chapter. First, according to the statistical results, the participants of the three writing instructions all made progress in spelling, grammar, content to coherence, organization, and syntactical complexity. The research shows that the three writing instructions could indeed improve EFL learners learning to write in the target language. Second, in the post-intervention questionnaire, the participants reported that they learned a variety of writing skills, grammar, and even planning during the eight-week instruction. After the instructions, they found out that they could compose longer sentences and paragraphs, write more correctly, present more organized ideas, and link ideas more smoothly. Third, from the questionnaire, the participants also mentioned that they found writing was not that difficult as they had thought at the beginning and they could gain sense of achievement and confidence when they were making progress. Also, during the process, they could discover their weaknesses. Then they would set more definite goals and in turn have stronger motivations for future learning. The second and third findings may suggest that EFL learners could write to learn the target language during the language learning process.
Research question 2: What is the relative contribution of the above three instructional
methods to the young EFL learners’ writing ability?
The results indicated that TBI and eclectic instruction were significantly better than PI for improving the young EFL learners’ writing ability. However, the eclectic instruction and
TBI had similar effects. The results are partially consistent with the hypothesis of the study.
First, as mentioned in the second chapter, PI focuses more on meta-linguistic and receptive skills so it may not be as effective as TBI stresses more on productive skills. Second, it is worth mentioning that the eclectic instruction only had marginally more significance than TBI.
One possible reason for that may lie in the duration of the instruction. In the present study, it was not realistic for the researcher to carry out both PI and TBI in one period so PI was carried out in the first four weeks and TBI was carried out in the later of four weeks. Though the participants of the eclectic group received both types of instructions, it could also be viewed that they only received half of the teaching hours of each instruction compared to PI and TBI groups. It could be reasoned that the half teaching hours may not be enough for the effects of a specific instruction to take place. Third, it remains unclear if learners’ of different proficiency level would have different outcomes from those of the current study.
Research question 3: Does each of the three methods impose a differential effect on different
aspects of young EFL learners’ writing ability?
This research question intended to find out if the three writing instructions could better help learners develop certain aspects of writing ability, fluency, accuracy, and syntactical complexity. The results indicated that TBI and the eclectic instruction were significantly better than PI in developing fluency. The possible reasons to account for the finding are
similar to the ones discussed in the second question since fluency is the more emphasized in TBI than in PI.
The results showed that the participants of the three instructions had similar improvement in both accuracy and complexity which are not consistent with the originally hypothesis of the study. One possible reason for this may lie in the teaching content of the eight-week instruction. The teaching content of the eight-week instruction was chosen from the second and third books the English textbook which is more basic, so the participants of the three instructions would perform similarly after the instruction. However, in the post-intervention questionnaire, the participants of TBI and the eclectic instruction responded that they were often confused about the timing and usage of specific grammar topics, such as tense, which were different from the ones of PI. This might imply that the participants of PI had a clearer concept about grammar usage than the participants of the other two groups.
Another possible reason may be that the GSAT rating rubrics could be slightly revised when grading learners’ writing. For example, the GSAT rating rubric in grammar and sentence structure is as follows: A piece of writing with serious grammar errors that could hardly be understood would be given zero point. A piece of writing with many grammar errors which spoil the original meaning would be given one or two points. A piece of writing with a few grammar errors but understandable would be given three points. A piece of writing with few grammar errors and with a variety of sentence structures would be given four points. The
raters of the present study found that the participants indeed improved in the eight-week instruction but there were still a few grammar errors in their writings so their rating would advance from two points to three points and then remain at three points. Thus, the rating scale might be more distinctive if the scale could be further distinguished from different error types into point three and four and the results of the study may be different.
The results also showed that the participants of the three instructions had similar improvement in syntactical complexity. One possible reason to account for the finding is similar to the one for grammar, which is also related to the simple teaching content, so the participants of the three instructions would perform similarly after the instruction.