Investigating the Effect of Mentor Texts on EFL Undergraduates’ Organization in Writing

• Main Author: Malakeh Itani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lasting Impressions Press 2020-10-01
• Series: International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies
• Subjects: mentor texts; writing proficiency; word choice; sentence structure; organization
• Online Access: http://www.eltsjournal.org/archive/value8%20issue3/9-8-3-20.pdf

Knowing that writing is a crucial but challenging language skill in both academic and career lives, researchers have continually explored ways to facilitate learning and teaching of writing at different educational levels. This experimental study investigates the impact of using mentor texts in undergraduate writing classes on the students’ writing proficiency. A quantitative, pre-posttest experimental design was used to achieve this purpose. Based on the strong relationship between reading and writing, and stemming from the modeling approach to learning, mentor texts are tested as potential tools in teaching word choice, sentence structure, and organization for Arab university undergraduates studying English as a foreign language. This is done by examining expository essays written by 128 female students before, during, and after the fifteen-week study period. The subjects are divided into control and experimental groups. A non-parametric Friedman test of differences among repeated measures is conducted and rendered a Chi-square value of 125.242 which is significant (p<.01). Comparing the scores of the three components of the essays, which are word choice, sentence structure, and organization, resulted in the finding that mentor texts could be an effective strategy to teach these three writing traits to undergraduate students.