Investigating the impact of using proofreading as a strategy to improve students’ writing skill
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Date
2019
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University Of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
This study is an attempt to figure out the role that proofreading plays in enhancing students' writing skill. The reason behind choosing proofreading is that the majority of the students encounter many difficulties in writing such as committing mistakes. Proofreading is considered as a crucial step in the writing skill, it helps students to identify errors and correct their own papers in order to minimize the number of mistakes and improve their level in writing. It is hypothesized that if English Foreign language students apply proofreading in their written productions, they will be able to enhance their level in this skill. In order to test the mentioned hypothesis, a quasi experimental design is conducted with second year LMD students of English at Larbi Ben M'hidi University of Oum El Bouaghi, including two main groups: an experimental group and a control group. Each group contains 15 students. Both groups passed through a writing session of pre-test. Then the experimental group had a series of treatment sessions about proofreading. However, the control group learners were carrying out their lectures with their teacher without receiving any information about proofreading. By the end of the treatment, the participants received a similar topic to that of the pre-test in order to make a comparison between their results and see whether the treatment was effective or not. The post-test results reveal that the experimental group achieved higher scores than the control group. Therefore, proofreading is an important strategy that helps EFL students enhance and improve their writing performance in general and paragraph writing in specific.
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Keywords
Writing skill, Paragraph writing, Proofreading