writing researchers and teachers. Next, the results of this study are discussed, and finally

Chapter Five

Conclusions

In this chapter, the implications for teaching and research are provided for EFL

writing researchers and teachers. Next, the results of this study are discussed, and finally

suggestions for future research are provided.

Pedagogical Implications

The results of this study showed that integrating organizing strategies with carefully

designed organizational practices into the writing program successfully promoted EFL

students’ writing proficiency in organization, content, vocabulary and overall writing

quality. Implications of the results of this study are stated as follows.

First, this study showed that the progress of the experimental group was significant

in organization and overall writing quality while that of the control group was not. Since

the experimental group received additional organizational exercises, these results seemed

to suggest that the reinforcement of these exercises played a crucial role in helping

students to become more familiar with English rhetorical structures. Therefore, EFL

teachers can incorporate the organizational exercises into their composition course from

the very first beginning instead of putting it off until students are equipped with better

writing proficiency.

Second, the organizing strategy outlining could enhance students’ awareness of the

organizational structures in English compositions. For beginning EFL student writers,

they need to work on too many things at the same time when they are faced with new

writing tasks, so they are often cognitively overloaded in their short-term memories. If

the EFL teachers can teach this organizing strategy in the pre-writing phase, students will

feel more confident and can tackle the subtasks in a manageable form, thus creating more

meaningful and organized final texts.

Third, this study showed that the participants’ proficiency in English grammar was

not effectively enhanced. Neither the experimental group nor the control group made a

significant progress in the component of grammar. The internalization of grammatical

rules is a slow and painstaking process. It takes a long time and a lot of training for

students to familiarize with all the grammatical patterns. The practice of grammar is

necessary in the process of learning English writing, but it should not be the sole focus.

EFL teachers could incorporate both the grammatical exercises and the organizational

exercises in teaching EFL student writers rather than only emphasize the grammatical

aspect in the process of teaching writing.

Conclusions

This research investigated the overall writing proficiency of EFL

senior-high-school students after receiving the instruction in organizing strategies. Their

writing performances in individual components (content, organization, vocabulary,

grammar, and mechanics) were also examined. Some important conclusions can be

drawn based on the findings.

First, the significant increase in scores of organization in the post-tests of the

experimental group indicated that the instruction of organizing strategies was helpful in

improving the organization of their writing. Second, the significant increase in scores for

overall writing quality in the post-test of the experimental group indicated that the

instruction of organizing strategies helped students write English compositions with

better writing quality. Third, the non-significant increase in scores for grammar in the

post-tests of the control group suggested that the instruction on sentence-level exercises

(sentence-making and sentence-combining) is not effective in enhancing students’ control

over English grammar. Neither did the instruction on grammar improve students’ overall

writing proficiency. Fourth, the significant increase in scores on content in the post-tests

of the experimental group indicated that the instruction of organizing strategies helped

students write English compositions with richer content. Fifth, the significant increase in

scores of vocabulary in the post-tests of the experimental group indicated that the

instruction in organizing strategies could enhance students’ control over English

vocabulary.

Suggestions for Future Research

Future research can be directed to an investigation of the following:

First, the number of the participants was small, and the participants were all female

students selected from the same school. In order to validly generalize research results,

there should be more participants who are randomly selected. A bigger number of

students, both male and female, should be randomly selected from different high schools

in Taiwan.

Second, data sources in this study came only from the compositions written in the

pre-test and the post-test, so the sources of the data were limited. In order to validly

generalize research results, it is proposed that in the future research there should be more

diversified data sources such as one or two more compositions written during the

teaching process or questionnaires and interviews which can probe into the participants’

viewpoints, so as to provide multiple perspectives into the invention process and results.

Besides, samples of students’ writing can also be analyzed in terms of the organizing

strategy use. The qualitative analyses of these data sources can be used to triangulate the

results obtained from the quantitative studies.

Third, it is not easy to see a very solid and concrete improvement in the students’

overall writing abilities only after a short period of instruction. In this study, the

instruction of organizing strategies lasted only one semester (about four months), it is

suggested that in the future research a longer period of instruction time should be taken

into consideration so that the results of the quantitative study would be more reliable in

terms of their significance.

Fourth, in this study two copies of each paper in the pre-test and the post-test were

reproduced and then the two raters started the rating procedures without covering

students’ names on the papers. Therefore, it is suggested that in the future research

students’ names should be covered before the raters start their rating procedures so that

the raters would be unbiased when grading the papers and the results of the study would

be more objective and well-founded.

Fifth, though both the experimental and the control groups in the study major in

science, the curriculum of the control group included only five hours of general English,

which was one hour less than the experimental group. This might be part of the reasons

why the control group did not make a significant increase in overall writing quality

because their exposure to English was less than that of their counterpart group. Therefore,

it is suggested that in the future research some necessary arrangements should be made in

order to ensure the equality of both groups’ weekly exposure to English and the reliability

of the study.