The Effects Of Strategy-based Instruction On EFL Argumentative Writing For High School Students

This study reports on an intervention research of strategy-based instruction(SBI)on writing strategies to students' English as foreign language(EFL)argumentative writing in a senior high school in China.Nine lessons on writing strategies constituted the classroom instruction to the participant students from Grade Two.The writing strategies instructed consisted of setting writing goals,planning for content,assessing the audience,getting ideas--reading to find out more,attending to language at the word level,attending to grammatical structures,writing an essay,revising an essay,getting feedback and revision.The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of writing strategy instruction on students' argumentative writing competence in the target school.The research questions are:1.To what extent does strategy-based instruction influence high school students' EFL argumentative writing competence?2.What are students' perceptions of strategy-based instruction on EFL argumentative writing?One hundred and thirteen students from two classes in Grade Two in Xinjiang Senior High School took part in the study.Nine writing strategy-based lessons were taught by the author to 56 students in the experimental group.Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were collected and performed to complement the research questions.The main data collection instruments included pre-,post-,and delayed post-tests of argumentative writing,pre-and post-intervention questionnaires,and interviews.Both the experimental class and the control class took part in the three writing tasks according to the teaching schedule.However,pre-,post-intervention questionnaires and interviews on students' perceptions of SBI were conducted only in the experimental class.The findings showed that the SBI intervention achieved a significant treatment effect on both the participants' writing competence and their strategy use,namely,text-generating,feedback handling,and revising.The qualitative analyses also suggested the experimental students orchestrated their strategy use better than before.And students held positive perceptions of strategy-based instruction as they could complete an argumentative writing with what they've learned in the SBI lessons.They could understand and use the strategies independently in argumentative writing as well as other similar tasks after the intervention.Results indicated that strategy-based instruction was welcome among high school students,and it facilitated the development of participants' writing competence and helped them to achieve better performances in argumentative writing with application of writing strategies.The study was an exploration to find a way that was practical and effective to change the teaching and learning model of writing in the researcher' school.It was an educational attempt to the EFL writing instruction,hoping to readjust and reform the traditional teaching model the school applied currently,and finally facilitate teachers' teaching methods and make students have more knowledge on strategy applications and gain further improvement in writing proficiency so as to achieve better language competence.