The findings of the study could be useful in improving young EFL learners’ writing ability in the following aspects. First, based on the findings of the study, teachers could adopt different types of writing instruction according to the teaching focuses. For example, teachers could use processing instruction when the teaching focus is accuracy or certain grammar items. On the other hand, task-based instruction or the eclectic instruction could be better options if teachers want to focus on fluency.
Second, the eclectic instruction could be used in combination with grammar instruction in junior high English teaching. As mentioned in the first chapter, junior high teachers give
English. Thus, students do not have opportunities to spontaneously apply what they learned to a meaningful context and this may result in an incomplete learning experience. Also, the English proficiency of junior high students in Taiwan is in bi-modal distribution so some students would find their English classes difficult but some would find them not challenging enough. In order to solve the problem, differentiated instruction has been emphasized in recent years. Giving different types of practices to students of different proficiency level could be a possible way implementing differentiate instruction. The eclectic instruction allows teachers to give grammar instruction to the whole class first, and then students of higher proficiency level do writing practice and students of lower proficiency level could do it with more structured learning sheets at the later stage.
Third, using the target language for real purposes may further facilitate their target language learning. The feedback questionnaire revealed that students are actually aware of the errors they made in their writing products and also reflective on the quality of their writing such as lack of vocabulary, poor content or loose organization. With awareness and reflection, they would pay more attention to specific grammar items and revise their writing in the next writing practice, with the result that their writing would gradually become accurate and well-organized. Students’ self-awareness is more effective than teachers’ repetitive instruction on certain grammar or writing advices. Besides, students would learn with higher motivation when they could use the target language communicatively such as when describing their
experiences and feelings. For them, the target language is not only a subject but a tool for them to use. In turn, they could also find that their English would be difficult to understand if they write with poor grammar and vocabulary and this might be an intrinsic motivation for them to make efforts to improve what they lack of in their future language learning endeavors.
Fourth, incorporating writing into Junior High English teaching could benefit not only students’ language learning, but also boost their ability of planning in English. In the first few weeks of writing instruction, the participants felt painful and discouraged because they thought they don’t know what to write. Their writing products were short (about eighty words) and they would keep writing similar sentences with the same words. A few weeks later, they would write about one hundred words and there were more ideas with a few details. During the last few weeks, some participants would choose to write one main idea and give more details about it and the length of their writing assignments grew to about one hundred and forty words. Furthermore, the participants’ writing looked messy at first because they did not plan out the content and wrote whatever came to their mind on the paper. However, by the end of the writing instruction, they could express their ideas more orderly. In the feedback questionnaire, the participants reported that they think it is useful to learn about how to plan out the content and express their ideas in a more appropriate structure of western writing style which is an important part of writing instruction for EFL learners.
Last but not least, giving writing instruction in Junior High English teaching could be an
important link bridging junior high school to senior high school. As mentioned in the first chapter, many senior high school students are anxious about writing English compositions because they have not ever written paragraphs in English and they would feel hopeless and frustrated during the writing process. The participants of the present study had the same feelings at the beginning. As noted before, they did not know how to start and what to write when composing paragraphs in English. They felt more discouraged when they got their graded writing because the points were low and there were many cross lines and error marks on their writing. However, as they made progress week by week, they got sense of achievement from it and gradually became confident in writing in English. In the post-intervention questionnaire, they were happy that they started learning how to write in English at the Junior High stage and they also think they are more capable of writing in English than before; many also reported that they are not afraid of the upcoming GEPT writing test. Thus, the researcher suggests that the junior high English teachers could start teaching students how to write in paragraphs in English in eighth or ninth grade so that the students would not be shocked and confused when learning how to writing English composition in senior high school.