The Effect Of Jigsaw Task On EFL Writing Performance

This study based on the researcher’s experience in teaching English and preliminary study conducted was designed to improve the college student’s writing ability by using jigsaw task. It aims to explore the effects of jigsaw writing on students’picture writing in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity. It is an empirical study involving mainly the quantitative research method. The value of fluency, accuracy and complexity of each subject’s composition was measured with the number of words per T-unit, the number of error-free clauses for accuracy and the number of clauses per T-unit respectively. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS11.5. The paper mainly focuses on answering these questions:1.Does jigsaw task have a positive effect on college students’ writing in English in terms of fluency.2. Does jigsaw task have a positive effect on college students’ writing in English in terms of accuracy?3. Does jigsaw task have a positive effect on college students’ writing in English in terms of complexity?4. Does jigsaw task have a positive effect on college students’ writing in English?The subjects of this study were76first year students of Beifang University of Minorities of the2011-2012academic year. All students were taken as the subjects of the research. They were divided into two groups (CG and EG) to perform respectively two different writing tasks:writing with jigsaw task and writing with traditional teaching way. The interview was performed by the researcher to investigate how the participants perceived communication difficulty, initiated and pursued jigsaw task as well.The finding of the study revealed that the appropriate model of jigsaw task in teaching writing can really stimulate the students’ motivation for improving writing skill. After such practicing, the results also showed that the writing in terms of the fluency and accuracy in jigsaw task group were significantly higher than that in traditional teaching task in control group. As for the complexity, the mean value of EG in jigsaw writing was a bit lower than the mean value of CG, while the difference was not statistically significant. This result is the same as Lee and Van Patten’s research (1995). In addition, the interview indicated that jigsaw task was successful in improving students’ interest and ability in writing with discussing by cooperative learning.Based on the result and findings, it is suggested that English teachers apply jigsaw task since it is beneficial not only in improving the writing but also in motivating students to write and work together to describe the event in the picture. Furthermore, jigsaw task is also helpful in encouraging students to actively participate writing picture description. Moreover, it is worthwhile for English teachers to use another strategy of cooperative learning as a learning strategy to enhance the students’ competence not only in writing but also in listening, speaking and reading skills. Last but not least, it is very helpful for students to use jigsaw task as one of their extracurricular activities.The present study is a new attempt of research on picture description writing with jigsaw task. To the future, the researcher would like to try and apply jigsaw task in the same field or in the teaching of other language skill, for instance, listening. In listening, for example, students can hear the different parts of a text, and then exchange information with others in order to complete a task. The student can report the task orally or in a written form.