Bibliothèque de L'IMIST/CNRST

Sous format papier

Université Mohammed V - Souissi

This research paper investigated the effect of reading model essays and writing practice on Moroccan EFL students’ persuasive writing performance. The major purpose behind this study was to compare the impact of reading and writing practice on the development of Moroccan students’ argumentative writing performance and shed more light on the reading writing relationship. Accordingly, four research questions and four hypotheses were developed to investigate the following topics: (i) to study the effect of reading argumentative model essays on Moroccan EFL students’ persuasive performance, (ii) to investigate the effect of writing practice on the improvement of Moroccan students’ persuasive performance, (iii) to compare the impact of these two methods on the development of Moroccan students’ argumentative writing performance, and (iv) find out whether the integration of both reading and writing practice into composition classes would have better results than when each of these methods is used isolately. To carry out this investigation, a quasi experimental design has been adopted. Sixty-two students from the International Institute for Higher Education in Morocco ( IIHEM) constituted the sample population of the study. This sample was divided into four groups, a control group and three experimental groups including, (i) a reading treatment group, (ii) a writing treatment group, (iii) and a reading/writing treatment group The data collected was submitted to statistical analysis using both descriptive and inferential statistics through the SPSS. In this analysis three statistical measures, ANOVA, t-tests and correlation were run yielding mixed results. The findings of the study thus showed that all three treatments were found to have a positive effect on the development of the students’ persuasive writing performance. However, a comparison of the three treatments showed differential effects. Thus the reading practice method turned out to have a stronger effect than the writing practice one since it positively affected the three types of scores involved (content, form, and general mean) as opposed to writing, which did not seen to affect form. On the other hand, while the reading/writing treatment was also found to have a greater positive impact than the writing treatment alone, as expected, no significant differences were revealed between this treatment and the reading practice treatment alone, as assumed in the fourth hypothesis. It was then concluded that this finding supports a major prediction of this study concerning the great positive effect reading has on FL learners’ writing performance. The paper ended with suggestions for both pedagogical practices and research.