Enhancing Iranian EFL Learners’ Descriptive Writing Through a Genre-based Pedagogy

Abstract

The present study is an investigation to study the influence of genre-based instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ descriptive writing. After applying an OPT, 60 out of 80 Iranian EFL M.A. male and female students from two Azad universities in Tehran, Iran, were selected as the main participants of the current study. The qualified participants were randomly divided into one experimental group and one control group each with 30 learners. The experimental group had the genres based instruction on descriptive writing. The treatment was given in 16 sequential sessions about 30 minutes at the beginning of each session. The control group received no special treatment and it was taught based on traditional methodology of writing instruction. At the initial stage of the experiment, to estimate participants’ knowledge at the beginning of the study, a pretest on writing performance was run to all participants. In this test, the two groups must write two compositions about the same topics. At the end of the study, a posttest was applied to check the participants’ descriptive writing after having instruction. The participants’ scores on the pretest and posttest were compared to estimate the degree of participants’ progress within the group, and also the scores of the two groups were compared with each other to measure the function of instruction. The analysis of the results presented that learners in both groups had the same ability but learners in experimental group outperformed than learners in control group and it was concluded that genres based instruction as treatment worked well. The findings of this study are useful for learners to improve their writing skills. Another significance of this study is to build learners’ confidence to echo their voice in the international educational contexts and to publish their articles in famous worldwide journals.