EFL Writing Development through Repetition of a Literature-Reading-Writing Task

Abstract

Our study focused on the effects of input frequency through reading-writing connections on students’ emerging accurate use of specific English forms. Taking a dynamic usage based (DUB) perspective, we investigated whether any changes occurs through repeating reading-to-writing tasks over one semester. We also traced writing development of students individually over time from a dynamic systems theory (DST) approach. All four participants in this study were EFL college students enrolled in an English reading and writing course at a Korean university. To repeat the same reading-to-writing tasks, students read an assigned picture book at home in advance. In class, students were asked to write a narrative for 30 minutes. The four students developed their writing skills in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, cohesion, and fluency as they repeated the same type of writing tasks over one semester. Particularly, task repetition had a marked effect on the fluency of the written texts. Another conclusion was that both high and low performance groups non-linearly developed their writing and showed different developmental trajectories.