KISSOUM, Nawel (2020) Motivating First Year Students of English as a Foreign Language through Effective Learning Strategies to Improve their Writing Skills (Department of English, University of Batna). Doctoral thesis, Université de Batna 2.
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Abstract
The present study aims at investigating the effect of teaching learning strategies on students’ written productions. The target population is all first-year students (673) at the department of English language and literature in Batna 2 University, during the second semester of the academic year 2016-2017. However, our sample comprises two groups forming a total of sixty (60) students. Our problem consists in finding a solution to the students’ poor writing performance using a quasi-experiment. The present research attempts to show that there is an effective relationship between writing and learning strategies, and subsequently proposing a course that would hopefully promote students’ writing performance. At the outset of the study, we hypothesize that it would appear that first-year EFL students at the department of English in Batna 2 University do not use learning strategies in their writing. Besides, motivating students through teaching learning strategies would likely improve students’ writing scores. To gather the data and analyze them, we opted for a process of triangulation by using different research tools and procedures. A preliminary questionnaire is administered at the beginning of the study to answer the first research question: do first-year students at the department of English in Batna 2 university use learning strategies in their writing? And its sub-question: if yes, what are they? The results revealed that (73.33 %) of the students do not use learning strategies in their writing. Then, the students have to fill in a questionnaire (using a Likert scale) to measure the frequency of their use of the four types of learning strategies, i.e. cognitive, metacognitive, social and affective strategies. This questionnaire is administered twice: at the beginning and at the end of the study to see whether there is an improvement in students’ frequency of using these strategies due to the strategy instruction. The results show that students’ frequency in using all types of strategies moved from “sometimes” to “often” with a difference of (0.04) in the mean. The third questionnaire given to students is a motivation questionnaire, which shows that they are intrinsically motivated, and this contradicts the results found in the teachers’ questionnaire, which divulged that the learners are extrinsically motivated. The last research tool is the use of students’ writing scores before and after the study, which shows that students’ written performance has improved. This result is checked using the paired-sample t-value at 59 degrees of freedom (t=10.179), which is significant at the alpha level (0.025) for a one-tailed hypothesis. Overall, the present investigation is an attempt to show that there are appropriate learning strategies to improve students’ writing skills. Key words: learning strategies, writing, motivation, metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social and affective strategies
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Lettres et langues étrangères > Langue anglaise |
| Divisions: | Faculté des lettres et langues étrangères > Département de langue anglaise |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jan 2021 10:07 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Jan 2021 10:07 |
| URI: | http://eprints.univ-batna2.dz/id/eprint/1888 |
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