The Effect of using picture series strategy on EFL students' narrative writing
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Date
2016
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university of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
Writing is an essential skill which allows learners to express themselves. However, students in the department of English, University of Oum-El-Bouaghi, find difficulties in developing this skill. It is believed that the traditional way of teaching writing is one of the problem which leads to the students' failure. Thus, it is necessary for the teachers of writing to apply new methods in teaching writing with its different genres. The present study aims at examining the effect of picture series strategy on enhancing EFL students' narrative writing. Accordingly, we hypothesized that if teachers teach their students narrative writing through the use of picture series strategy, their narrative writing would be improved. In order to test our hypothesis, a quasi-experimental design was followed. The participants engaged in the experiment were 59 first-year LMD students of English at the University of Oum El Bouaghi during the academic year 2015-2016. They were divided into two groups; one is the experimental, and it contained 29 students; the other one is a control group with 30 students. Both groups were pre-tested; they were asked to write a narrative paragraph in order to assess their level. During the treatment, while the experimental group received instructions about the narrative text with the use of picture series strategy to know how a narrative text should be written, the control group did not receive any instructions and was taught narrative writing with the traditional method. After the treatment, the post-test was administered to both groups. The results obtained from the paired sample t-test show that the experimental group subjects improve their narrative writing from the pre-test to the post-test. Besides, the independent sample t-test proves that experimental group's improvement in narrative writing was higher than the control group's improvement. So, our hypothesis was validated and we deduce that picture series strategy has a positive effect on EFL students' narrative writing. To conclude, as the use of picture series strategy used in this study has demonstrated its effectiveness in developing students' narrative writing, Picture series strategy should not be disregarded by the writing teachers.
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Teaching : EFL