Writing in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Effects of Prompts on the Iranian Learners of English

Abstract

The present study intended to inspect whether different prompts (bare, vocabulary, and prose model) could exert different effects on the overall quality of the Iranian intermediate EFL learners' writing performances or not, and in case of effect, which of the prompts was efficacious toward the enhancement of the participants' overall writing quality. Forty male and female Iranian intermediate students learning English as a foreign language were selected via administering the Preliminary English Test (PET) and were each given three different writing prompts (bare, vocabulary, and prose model) during three consecutive weeks to write. The writing tasks involved the descriptive mode of discourse. Each task was presented in the context of a reply to an imaginary pen pal from England, Jack. A close examination of the results manifested the fact that the prose model elicited the best overall writing quality in the descriptive discourse mode when evaluated holistically. The bare prompt typically resulted in the poorest writing. The vocabulary prompt elicited writing samples that usually were of higher overall quality than those obtained with a bare prompt, but of lower quality than samples obtained with a prose model prompt.

Effect of prompt type on test-takers’ writing performance and writing strategy use in the continuation task

“…Additionally, the general trend observed was that prompts with more task elements yielded higher average scores at the group level. These results corroborate previous findings that writing prompts with higher cognitive demands may produce higher quality essays than bare prompts (Bahrebar & Darabad, 2013; Way et al, 2000; Robinson, 2001). With respect to the use of the continuation task in high-stakes testing contexts, our results provide empirical support for Liu and Chen’s (2016) recommendation that more specific task prompts, such as those that provide an opening sentence for each paragraph and that require the use of particular key words, can be considered to allow learners to demonstrate their writing ability more fully.…”

“…They found that the prose model prompt produced the highest mean writing scores and the bare prompt the lowest. Bahrebar and Darabad (2013) reported similar results in their examination of the effects of the same three prompt types on the overall writing quality of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In terms of textual features, it has been reported that a more explicit prompt tended to elicit more fluent and accurate production (Way et al, 2000), lower syntactic complexity (O’Loughlin & Wigglesworth, 2007), and more varied modes of argumentation (He & Sun, 2015).…”