Abstract:
Learning to write in English and teaching writing to EFL students have caused a multitude
of problems both to the student and the teacher. Preliminary investigations conducted on
students' difficulties in writing revealed their inability to string the words to obtain a
meaningful sentence or translate their generated thoughts into correct linguistic form and
their inadequacy of knowledge in grammar. Therefore, the aim was to design a teaching
procedure to teach writing to EFL students, utilizing the concepts which emerged through
second language research in the recent past: the comprehensible input hypothesis
(Krashen, 1982,Van Pattern 1987), the comprehensible output hypothesis (Swain, 1995),
scaffolding
(Bruner, 1966, Wood,Bruner,Ross, 1976, Vygotsky, 1978,Gillimore, 1998),feedback,(Hyland
&Hyland,2006),recycling (Mayer 1983), to find the impact the second language concepts
have in improving writing in EFL students. The action research study was conducted with
two samples of grade 11 students of different schools in varied scholastic backgrounds.
Initially, the simple sentence patterns of English and basic sentence grammar were pre
taught and each lesson conducted initially and thereafter moved through the cycle: plan,
action, observation, and reflection. Then the consecutive lesson was decided by the
observations of the preceding lesson. Focus on form activities which draw the learners'
attention to the linguistic form while focusing on meaning of the content were based on
both the comprehensible input & output hypothesis; used by matching the cognitive
abilities of the students. Teaching techniques such as providing scaffolding, feedback;
recycling the lessons when necessary, too were administered within the lesson. In addition,
the students' self reports, audio recording, mini tests, portfolios and questionnaires were
the data collection tools manipulated in this study. Analyzing data revealed that pre
teaching the basic syntactic patterns of English & teaching the basic grammar, improved
writing. Further, it was disclosed that the focus on form activities, scaffolding, feedback
and recycling the lessons too enhanced writing. Furthermore, it showed that collaborative
teaching; using LI to teach writing also had an impact on enhancing writing. Moreover,
the data unveiled that a pattern emerging in writing development in the two EFL samples,
which required further research with different student samples prior to a final
generalization