MOTIVATION MATTERS IN ADOPTING PREWRITING STRATEGIES AND IMPROVING WRITING ACHIEVEMENT AMONG BANGLADESHI ADULT EFL LEARNERS

 

Sayma Arju1

 

1 Assistant Professor, Dept of Englis, Stamford University Bangladesh  744, Saat Mosjid Road, Dhanmondi , Dhaka-1209, E-mail:sayma.arju@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

Keywords:

appropriate planning; prewriting strategies; explicit instruction; writing achievement; motivational incentives;

 

To state the benefits of prewriting activity Schweiker-Marra (2000) stated that students writing anxiety can be minimized through a writing program that emphasizes prewriting activities. But the ability of choosing an appropriate planning for a particular writing task is necessary for a satisfactory result. At the same time learners experiencing difficulties with prewriting activity are needed to be motivated and encouraged to use various strategies for improving their writing. The aim of this article is to show (1) whether the explicit instruction could motivate the ESL learners to use prewriting strategies and (2) whether the instruction on prewriting strategies can help students improving their writing style. Data were drawn from 40 EFL university students before and after an explicit instruction program lasted for 10 classes (75mins each). To determine relationships between writing strategies instruction program and learners writing achievement, a t-test analyses was used. Result shows, motivational incentives are needed to apply while teaching writing strategies and only a well-planned pre-writing activity can help EFL learners in overcoming the writing block and aid them successfully to prove their creativity and individuality.  

 

 

 Publisher All rights reserved.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Adopting pre-writing activity to support and to improve writing skill is widely recognized by the language practitioners as a beneficial micro-skill. Pre-writing strategies provoke conscious thoughts, actions, or behaviors needed to plan before writing. Researches show students who are exposed to many different prewriting strategies achieve potential superior writing ability over those students who are not (Deng  et  al, 2003). For this reason ESL teachers may instruct prewriting activities at the earliest stages of writing instruction to help their students acquire good language skills (Go, 1994). In fact, during academic years learners need to handle various kinds of writing activities following different genre.

 

Prewriting activities are to assist and to organize writers’ thought appropriately following the norm and the presentation style of each individual genre. Hence, a number of techniques and strategies are introduced and practised as pre-writing activities in EFL classes; learners’ writing proficiency not always satisfactorily improved. In most cases it happens if the learners are not properly motivated to practice prewriting activities or if they are not aware about the fact that a pre-writing activity that has been successful as preparatory task for one genre may be proved useless for another. Apparently it seemed that writers obtain goals only when they begin with a good plan ( Kucer , 2009). Observations show, learners’ face problems in planning if either the chosen pre-writing activity misfits with the writing requirement or the learners’ themselves are not trained adequately to handle the strategy. Both the issues make the writing activity more complicated and therefore turn the learners less motivated to use any prewriting activity.  Researcher’s interest of the present study lies around the effect of the explicit pre-writing strategies training on writing improvement of the EFL learners. It investigated the research questions:

 

Ř  whether the ESL learners could be motivated to pick up prewriting strategies by the explicit instruction of some purposeful prewriting techniques.

Ř  whether the instruction of prewriting strategies can help students improving their self-control , attention  towards writing and  self writing style.

 

For this quasi experimental study, data have been collected from the 1st semester’s students of under graduation level of Stamford University, Bangladesh as pre test and post test phase of a four months course. Besides, 80 practicing language teachers of secondary schools and 30 language teachers of tertiary level  of the country are addressed in two different workshops to understand the traditional approach of teaching writing in Bangladesh .Results demonstrate that a well-designed pre-writing strategy training with adequate motivational incentives could significantly impact on ESL students' pre-writing strategy use and improve writing quality by helping the learners a lot in overcoming writing blocks and supporting them successfully to prove their creativity and individuality.

 

LITERATURE REVIEW

 

Motivation is an essential element of successful language acquisition and is a dynamic process subject to continuous flux (Do¨rnyei, 2001). Williams and Burden (1997) suggest that each individual L2 learner’s motivation is influenced by both external factors related to the sociocultural and contextual background of the learner and internal factors related to the individual learner. Internal factors include the learners’ attitudes towards the activity, its intrinsic interest, and the perceived relevance and value of the activity. Graham and Perin (2007) identified the requirement of teaching writing skill as a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy.  According to Mekheimer (2005) and Hennessy and Evans (2005) Writing turns into an effective tool to help students becoming active participants in their own learning only when it encourages critical thinking and learning, motivates communication, and makes thought available for reflection. Writing in second language is a complex process since the EFL learners need overcoming writing blocks and taking challenges of generating ideas relevant to writing topics and there upon considering the writing purpose deploy them in appropriate organizational patterns. For Dujsik (2008) writing is more than a means to create a document; it can be a method to discover topics and explore related ideas. Similarly pre-writing refers to practices to identify new ideas, invite prior knowledge, put critical thinking into action etc.

 

        However, to instruct academic writing in EFL classes both the product and process approaches are widely used. Product approach encourages learners to imitate and reconstruct the teachers’ model with minor changes. Richards and Rodgers (2001), stated that “(Product approach) is basically a process of mechanical habit formation” (p 57) whereas process approach demands the learners to perform according to a series of activities. In process writing prewriting step gets huge importance as it leads the writers through a good pedagogical practice that in turn guides to produce more developed composition (Dibello & Ting-shu , 2007). On the other hand the same activity in product writing helps in identifying elements and strengthens the detail by imitating figurative language. Therefore, in both approaches there are rooms for prewriting activities and the principle requirement for following any of the approaches is an arrangement of preliminary ideas to facilitate writing. Writing as Mitcham (2009) stated, is one of the “biggest challenges” to many ESL learners and therefore, could turn into a quite “confusing task” because as soon as they face a writing task, they have been observed to be afflicted by an utter state of bewilderment and writer’s blocks are originated which lead to a failure in developing subsequent stages in order to complete a writing task or to produce ideas for communication ( Tukiendorf, 2008 ; Shafiee , 2010). Towards the university students with such difficulties, a positive change in writing proficiency level can possible be brought with successful pedagogical instruction for   applying prewriting strategies. Only when the students have better ideas of how to go about a writing task, they seem more positive and confident about the task. Thus adaptation of pre-writing strategies among the   university students has been rewarding as a means of constructing knowledge and promoting writing (Mahnam & Nejadansari , 2012). The success of using prewriting strategies has been observed by many in their studies (Hatasa & Soeda, 2000; Sasaki, 2000, 2002; Manchón, Roca de Larios & Murphy 2007). Talebinezhad & Negari (2007) tried to provide evidence for the effectiveness of few Prewriting strategies e.g. brainstorming, concept mapping and free writing as prewriting strategies as fruitful platforms for students to generate ideas and crystallize their dormant thought to embark on the complex process of writing. In such a research on Palestinians EFL students argumentative writing Al-Shaer (2014) found that the prewriting strategies significantly influenced students’ ability to present stronger claims, more unified and coherent paragraphs, more developed supporting details. He also marked improvement in the mean scores of the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group of the research which were M= 31.06 and M=32.44 respectively. Go (1994) also argues that prewriting involves energizing students’ participation in thinking, group interaction, and skeletal writing activities that become components of a writing task. Prewriting activities are not only to help students acquire the target language more effectively, but also to build their interpersonal, thinking, and planning skills that can be utilized in other fields”. Schweiker-Marra and Marra (2000), LaRoche (1993) investigated the effects of prewriting activities on psychological factors such as attitude and anxiety although they demonstrated that student-writing anxiety can be lowered through a writing program that emphasizes prewriting activities. But Tompkins (2001) noted that the most neglected stage in writing is the prewriting stage due to what many EFL writers struggle to organize the content messages of academic essays appropriately and logically. Studies regarding this issue help Researchers found out a number of reasons that are really accountable for the students’ slow improvement in writing skill even after the toil of years together. For example, Krashen (2011) notes that unavailability of reading materials cause poor performance in writing because when children have access to reading material, they read and reading has been shown to improve vocabulary, grammar, spelling, reading and writing ability. Schaefer (2011) mentioned, “most schools don’t have a scope and sequence or a set of materials and strategies that outlines a core writing curriculum for each grade and across grades. So, although students may have an exemplary writing experience and make great gains one year, they start all over the next year because the new teacher doesn’t know what was taught the previous year or has a different set of objectives in mind.”  Whereas Blackburn-Brockman (2001) found teachers who did not pre write seriously in middle and high school, or who did not pre-write at all could not guide the learners for the task effectively. For this reason, Cutler ( 2008) and Grisham & Wolsey (2011) feel, teachers require concrete preparation on teaching writing beginning their teaching career. Fry and Griffin (2010) and Cutler (2008) recommend that colleges and universities should advance the learning and teaching of writing in an effort to better prepare the new teachers.

 

        However, all efforts of teaching prewriting strategies may go in vein if the learners are not motivated properly to use prewriting or could identify the benefits of the activity. Research has found that the successful handling of a task is dependent on learner’s perceptions of personal competence, task difficulty level and their attitude towards the task that means learners who reported negative self-concepts perform tasks more poorly than the learners with positive self-concepts ( Chapman, Tunmer, & Prochnow, 2000 ). Again, as older struggling learners may have experienced many years of frustration and failure, they want to know why they need to learn something before undertaking learning (Knowles, Swanson & Holton, 2005). Besides, students have clear preferences for how they learn new material and whether they take up a new strategy. Noels & Clement (1996) report that undergraduate foreign language learners, who are substantially motivated, tend to adopt more learning strategies and use them more frequently in order to achieve anticipated learning outcomes in comparison to those who are relatively less motivated. So motivational determinants, including self-efficacy, expectancy, anxiety, interests, reasons for learning, etc influence the learners to take up a new strategy in practice. Furthermore Tarnopolsky (2000) stated that de-motivation in learning writing emerges from the absence of an immediate need for acquiring writing skills or the lack of fun in the content of the writing assignments. Yet, according to the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985), co- operative group learning let the learners get into the learning environment, which can foster the highest motivation and engagement, including self-regulation for learning, enhanced academic performance, persistence in learning, creativity, satisfaction etc. Zoltán Dörnyei (2005) introduced four components to motivation in the education field: interest, relevance, expectancy, and satisfaction.

 

It has also been observed that students are more motivated if they know that the writing assignment will be part of continuous assessment and will be counted in the final result. In addition, students reported that teacher’s feedback on their writing motivated them to engage in further writing practice. While working with prewriting activity, at the beginning, most students showed anxiety due to frustrating writing experiences from the past. For López-Nerney  and Binder (2003) “if students found these activities helpful and enjoyable, they would be more motivated to learn and become better writers” (p. 32). In a study with undergraduate EFL students at Jimma University, Ethiopia, Gupta and Woldemariam (2011) found that undergraduate students with strong motivation demonstrated high level of enjoyment, confidence, perceived ability, and positive attitude towards using writing strategies, use the strategies most frequently. Mills et al. (2006) feel that the learners need to be encouraged to adopt planning and monitoring strategies in order to foster a more proactive positive linguistic behavior. Self assessment activity, scopes for sharing personal feeling, cooperative writing tasks etc. really work as incentives for learners’ to invite proactive positive linguistic behavior while writing. In their research with ESL writers in Hong Kong, Lo & Hyland (2007) observed enhancement in students’ writing engagement and motivation after creating scopes for sharing personal experience, voicing their own thoughts and feelings, writing for real audience etc . They noticed that because of this practice the content length of the compositions written by the students increased by 45% on average though still they had problems with organization style and language use. Meihami & Varmaghani (2013) investigated on using self assessment in EFL writing classroom and found that participants in the experimental group significantly improved their writing proficiency means score about 13.37 after getting writing strategy training. In a study on guided self assessment activity learners graded self writing using standard scaling system and therefore got motivated for better and improved production.

 

WRITING AND MOTIVATION IN

THE CONTEXT OF BANGLADESH

 

Repeatedly poor performances of the university admission seekers especially in the writing part of the admission test make the language practitioners and educators of the country concerned about the challenges faced by the learners during writing. A close observation on answer scripts of admission test revealed that more than one half of learners are unable to write a error free short composition upon any topic and the types of error they make are almost similar which include common surface errors, and organizational problems. Further information collected from 80 teachers of secondary schools addressed at a workshop held on mid July, 2011 helps to explain  about writing instruction and level of students’ motivation towards writing activity in Bangladeshi context. Teachers participated in the workshop admitted that writing for communication in real-life situations is rarely practiced in the class because they need to devote excessive attention to the testing situation and the assumed preferences of the test-paper raters. The examination oriented teaching system controlled the writing classes from topic selection to evaluation process. Participated teachers also identified few limitations in certain instructional procedures or pedagogy that are traditionally followed as writing instruction. For example in case of prewriting typically students are asked to do brain storming using clues given by the teacher in question form. But during self writing activities in class or at test time learners are not asked to go for prewriting because of the limitation of time. In fact, Learners experience in writing is limited to their course books focusing on essay writing. Besides, many teachers prefer to give writing as home works.

 

Few teachers also pointed out that even after a brain storming activity students fail to use the prewriting in their comprehension because either the gathered ideas are not properly content oriented or the learners cannot organize comprehensive written text independently because of their relatively low English proficiency. May be because of this fact teaches get too generous towards the learners and instantly get to write a sample piece on the board though the students do not take it as a sample. They copy it and engage immediately in memorization. Thus writing instruction from schools remains incomplete for most of the learners and they struggle a lot when they come to the universities because:

 

Ř  they have misused their efforts in memorization other than devoted them for achieving the skill.

Ř  they have limited scopes in practising writing till the secondary level of education.

Ř  they have had wrong orientation with the writing strategy.

Ř  they possess poor and insufficient knowledge about organizing ideas in writing. 

Ř  writing is conducted in the classroom as an individual activity with the teacher as the sole audience.

Ř   and most students consider writing as difficult and unrewarding.

 

In universities of Bangladesh writing instructions start using process approach. A number of pre writing strategies like forming spider gram, clustering, outline planning etc. are addressed here to improve students’ writing. Hence, students seem unwilling to go through any prewriting activity unless it is indicated as mandatory or graded task as was reported by 30 university teachers who have experience in teaching students from business, science and humanities departments at another different work shop on “Teaching Language Course” held on september,2011. These group of teachers mentioned most students’ writings are not interesting and motivating. Ideas from the mentioned workshop helped to design an intensive writing instruction with explicit prewriting strategy training for the present research.

 

METHOD

 

Instruments used in the present study include writing tests to measure writing achievements and writing strategy questionnaire. The questionnaire aims to investigate students’ background information and information about their use of writing strategy during writing processes. On the other hand scores that students obtained in the writing tests (pretest and posttest) are used in correlation analyses to demonstrate correlations between the independent variable, i.e., application of motivational activities, and dependant variables, i.e., the rate of strategy use and writing achievements. Participants of the study are under-graduation level 43 students who did registration for the course named “Composition” (of 100 marks, 4 credits). Among this learners group there were 17 who either had undergone the same course before but achieved a very poor grade or had left the course in fear of getting poor grade. The pretest investigation was done at the beginning of the course. During pretest session at first the learners are asked to write a three paragraph composition on a given topic. Later the questionnaire attached in Appendix-A was distributed among the students. The questionnaire enquired about learners previous writing experience, motivation and manner of strategy use. After ten classes (75 minutes each) on writing practices and strategy training, the learners sat for  the post test. Here students’ written responses were counted as required data.

 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

 

Data collected from questionnaire responses shows majority of the participants 60% (26 in number) found writer’s block as their problem areas whereas 25% (10 in number) indicated that towards them organizing ideas as the most difficult stage of writing. Data also revealed that towards 38 % (17 in number) prewriting seemed beneficiary but 68% (27 in number) prewriting activity was simply waste of time and it made the writing task more complicated. This responses from the learners revealed that participants were not exposed to any explicit instruction on using writing strategies. Besides, learners responses towards questionnaire focusing their motivation level towards writing showed that their previous experiences did not support many (55%) of them to feel confident while writing and only 8% ( 4 in number) learners had experience in peer evaluation . Yet, lack of appropriate knowledge of writing strategies can be attributed to the absence of using writing strategies and the use of appropriate writing strategies impact positively on learners’ writing achievement and reduce their anxiety. Among individuals experiencing anxiety avoidant behavior that often interfered performance are common   Therefore, instruction on writing strategies is no less significant than other basic areas of instruction.

 

       In writing task given as pretest it has been seen that 4 out of 43 learners submitted the blank script; 31 wrote 8-12 sentences but there was no cohesive relation among them and some sentences did not have any direct relation to the topic; 37 scripts contained no topic sentence and 39 scripts were full with several types of grammar mistakes. In addition, variations in terms of choosing vocabulary or sentence pattern were rare and last of all as pretest scripts showed no learners went for any prewriting activity during this session.                                  

 

         In order to observe whether motivation could encourage the learners to pick up prewriting strategies and thus could improve their writing achievement practices, an intensive training for next ten sessions was planned. For this training session lessons were planned to raise learners’ awareness about the writing strategies with special reference to prewriting strategies and to encourage strategy use by offering controlled practices. In these sessions learners were also trained to scan a topic, categorize it, find out supporting ideas using definite purposeful prewriting strategies. According to Dexter & Hughes (2011) teacher modeling demonstrating prewriting strategy can improve the overall quality of student writing by supporting students through the writing process. However, after the presentation of a graphic organizer the teacher is responsible for explaining how to use it effectively .So,While presenting any of the strategies teachers first capitalizing on what students already know about the strategy gave an overview of reasons why it was used for the particular text’s genre. The teacher also presented the examples of each writing strategies on the board and modeled them for the students. Learners also trained on the process of rewriting the gathered information into complete sentences. During each session, learners practiced on the provided topics and rehearsed the use of each strategy. Regular feedback was provided and corrections were made as per the learners’ requirements. Dornyei & Csizer (1998) in their study with Hungarian ESL students created comparatively relaxed and pleasant learning environment by ensuring good teacher-student relationships in order to increase learners’ self confidence, promote learners’ autonomy, personalize the learning process, increase learners’ goals etc. For this reason in the training session number of motivation strategies including incorporating reading, work in pair and group, self assessment etc. are included to remove anxiety and invite confidence among the learners. While introducing any prewriting strategy learners were asked to write about a topic using any suitable model of prewriting. Next the learners were showed how the particular prewriting activity brought difference in their writing. So learners’ motivation was sought through using the following model of task presentation:

 

       Write ------ Sample provide ------ Compare ------- Edit

 

        According to Oxford (1990) certain behaviors which do not directly involve the target language but are nevertheless essential for effective language learning for example  metacognitive  strategies includes strategies which learners utilize to monitor, plan, hypothesize, and evaluate their  performance on learning tasks, as in  planning before writing ;social strategies involve seeking help from teachers, peers, and others; affective strategies are techniques helping learners to better handle their emotions, attitude, and motivation in their writing tasks etc.  during the learning sessions of the study. While writing on unfamiliar topics the teacher took multiple attempts e.g.  regular web browsing, reading from newspaper, encyclopedia, taking help from dictionary etc.  to make the topic familiar towards the learners. Further selective reading activities were frequently integrated to help the learners building up primary ideas about a topic as well as getting more specific idea about the text genre they are working with for example before working with narrative writing learners worked with informal letters narrating incidents or event to make the learners to be familiar with the style. In this connection Smith (2001) states, “the reader who develops strategies for understanding the mood and tone of a reading passage will be able to incorporate mood and tone into his or her writings. And writers who have an awareness of audience and purpose will have those skills needed to determine the author's purpose when they read” (Par. 12-13). Learners also got sessions to practice whether they could choose suitable prewriting strategies for each particular purpose because “sometimes young writers rely overmuch on one organizational strategy [and] if this strategy isn't working, they get stuck” (“Teaching Writing Process”, 2008 par. 5). For this reason the teacher always monitored learners’ activities and demonstrated that flexibility in using prewriting technique could reduce anxiety and promote better production. For example, for writing a description (static) guided coining words technique or compound word formation technique ( Shown in Appendix-2)  are suitable for the beginners whereas for writing narratives a flow chart could be the best option.  Surely the learners achieve confidence when they discover themselves in a process of using their ideas successfully. Therefore naturally organization of ideas leads the learners to use them in practice. In exercise, here for the activity learners were involved in speaking out what they were intended to write. Students’ verbal expressions about any concept not only give self confidence to the learners but also give the teachers the opportunity to provide positive reinforcement, which further enhances the students’ confidence (Gattis, 1998).

 

       The Post training investigation was done at the end of the trimester and data collected on the basis of the assessment of a written test. In the meantime the learners became aware about the positive effects of using prewriting strategies and in the post-test session a large group of the learners (85%) used prewriting strategies. The results are consistent with the findings of Talebinezhad & Negari (2007) Mahnam & Nejadansari (2012). Chamot (2004) mentions that explicit strategy instruction essentially involves in creating students’ awareness about the benefit of strategies they use because it involves in investigating student practice with new strategies, student self-evaluation of strategies used and practice in transferring strategies to new tasks are involved as well. While Examining the Effect of Strategy Instruction on Writing Apprehension and Writing Achievement of EFL Learners Mohseniasl (2014) found that the students who received the instructions have improved their writing skill in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics. In the present research for assessing students’ writing both from pre and post test sessions Roebuck’s Analytic scoring Rubrics, modified by Maftoon & Rabiee (2006)was used. According to this assessment check list total 20 marks was separated in four components:  mechanism, vocabulary, grammar, and organization. Each part has 5 scores, (5 means no errors, 4 means 1 to three errors, 3 means 4 to 6 errors, 2 means 7 to 9 errors, and finally 1 means 10 and over errors). Results from the pretest and the post test have been used for a two-tailed unpaired t test to compare learners’ writing achievement at pre and post training situations. Result of the t test is shown in table-1 and 2 :

 

Table -1:

      Paired statistics of pre-test and post test marks

 

Mean

   No. of participant

Std. Deviation

Std. Error

Mean

Pre-Test marks

44.5000

40

25.7300

4.0683

Post-Test marks

72.7500

40

26.0500

4.1189

                   

 

Table -2:

Paired test of pre-test and post

           Paired Differences (mark  pre test – mark  post test)

Mean

SD

Std. Error

Mean

95%confodence

interval of the difference

T Value

df

Std error of difference

 

Sig.(2-tailed)

Lower

Upper

-28.25

-0.32

-.0506

-39.775

-16.7244

-4.8797

77.9881

5.789

p<0.0001

 

 

        Result shown in the tables above reveal that there is a significant difference between the two mean scores of pre-test ( M= 44.50,SD=25.73) and  post-test (M= 72.75, SD=26.05) conditions and t-value is -4.8797 and two-tailed p-value is < 0.0001. By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be extremely statistically significant. This means during Post-test the learners showed higher level of proficiency in writing than the Pre-test situation. Therefore, association of motivational constituent, prewriting strategy training could stimulate ESL learners to pick up prewriting strategies and thereby could help students improving their self-control, attention in writing and self writing style.

CONCLUSION

 

 It is of course the teachers’ challenge to stimulate learners’ thought and to motivate them to perform as independent writers because academic success is largely dependent on the ability of organized writing. Thus the target of the writing classes becomes skill focused that is to assist the learners to achieve the skill of organized writing and to deliver their ideas successfully with powerful expressions. Data collected from the pre-test, and the post-test proved that successful instruction on prewriting helps to bring out learners’ implicit possibility in writing and established that as explicit reality. By becoming familiar with variety of prewriting techniques and in using them successfully and appropriately in their own writing process, learners achieved confidence on their personal abilities and for them writing is no more a fearful activity. Now they also could discover that writing consists of making choices of what to write, how and where to accommodate it, on the basis of choices that the author intended for successful communication. In fact, choosing an appropriate prewriting strategy could help ESL learners in overcoming a large portion of writing anxieties and promote them to express themselves with the sense of creativity and individuality.

 

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        University Press.

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX-1

 

WRITING APPREHENSION QUESTIONNAIRE

 

Directions: below are 20 statements about writing. Please mark from “Strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” that best describe your agreement or disagreement with these statements. Remember that there are no correct answers; only give your honest response.

 

 

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Uncertain

Agree

StronglyAgree

1. I avoid writing.

 

 

 

 

 

2. I am afraid of writing essays when I know they will be evaluated.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Taking a composition course is a very frightening experience.

 

 

 

 

 

4. Handing in a composition makes me feel good

 

 

 

 

 

5. My mind seems to go blank when I start to work on my composition.

 

 

 

 

 

6. Expressing ideas through writing seems to be a waste of time.

 

 

 

 

 

7. I feel confident in my ability to express my ideas clearly in writing.

 

 

 

 

 

8. I like to have my friends read what I have written.

 

 

 

 

 

9. I’m nervous about writing.

 

 

 

 

 

10. People seem to enjoy what I write.

 

 

 

 

 

11. I enjoy writing.

 

 

 

 

 

12. I never seem to be able to write down my ideas clearly.

 

 

 

 

 

13. I have a terrible time organizing my ideas in a composition course.

 

 

 

 

 

14. I know about prewriting strategy

 

 

 

 

 

15. I always use prewriting strategy

 

 

 

 

 

16. Prewriting makes the writing task easier

 

 

 

 

 

17. prewriting is simply waste of time

 

 

 

 

 

18. prewriting itself is a difficult task

 

 

 

 

 

19. Writing is a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

20. I’m not good at writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX-2

FINDING WORDS WITH CLUE

 

 

                                                       Topic

              find out words according to the following direction:

     1st line:    One word related to the topic (synonym /definition)

     2nd line: Two words (adjectives/describing words to highlight the 1st line)

     3rd line:    Three words (verbs/action words)

     4th line:    Four words (any type of words that focus the topic)

     5th line:    One word that can replace the first line

 

Appendix-2:

Finding compound words:

 

 

Sea-----

vessel

Deep---

fish

storm

pollution

wave

current

level