The Effect of Instruction on Writing Performance of Intermediate EFL Persian Students

Abstract

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of instruction on writing performance of EFL Iranian learners. For this purpose, a group of 33 Iranian learners studying at an English language school located in Isfahan, Iran, took part in this research. They attended an L2 writing course for 16 sessions and were instructed on how to develop their skill of writing in English. Prior to the instruction, they were asked to write a pretest on the topic of "Immunity against Infectious Diseases ". The same topic was given to them at the end of the course as a posttest. The participants' writings were exactly typed as they were in Microsoft office 2003 and the number of words and spelling errors were counted. Using ESL composition profile, their performance on both pretest and posttest were scored. The participants' scores on each subcategory of the ESL profile together with their quantitative scores were entered into the statistical program of SPSS 16. Using a matched t-test, the researchers investigated the mean differences between the pairs. The results indicated that the difference between the means is significant and the writing instruction has made a difference. The calculated effect size also showed a very large effect.