AN EXPLORATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PEER-EDITING TECHNIQUE IN TEACHING ESSAY WRITING AT FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY, LHU

1

LAC HONG UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY

RESEARCH REPORT
TITLE:

AN EXPLORATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
PEER-EDITING TECHNIQUE IN TEACHING
ESSAY WRITING AT FOREIGN LANGUAGES
FACULTY, LHU

Le Thi Bich Vy & Ngo Thi Thu Ha


2

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
YZ
To each of these following people, we would like to express our deepest gratitude
for what they have done for the completion of our research.
First of all, we are deeply grateful to the Administration Board of the Foreign
Languages Faculty, especially to Associate Professor Tran Thi Hong- the Dean, for their
consistent support and encouragement as well as for their invaluable professional
consultancy, without all of which we would not be able to finish our study on time.
Secondly, we also wish to express our great gratitude to the four colleagues who,
in spite of their very busy schedule, were very willingly to participate in and to provide us
with much useful ideas for our study.
Thirdly, we would like to thank all of 120 senior students of batch 2007 for their
very enthusiastic co-operation during our research.

Last but not least, our big thanks are hoped to be sent to all of the other
colleagues of the Foreign Languages Faculty for their precious comments that enabled
us right-time adjustment in the way we carried out the research.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................... 1-5
1.1. Statement of the problem .......................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Justification of the study .......................................................................................................... 3
1.3. Research questions .................................................................................................................... 4
1.4. Hypotheses ............................................................................................................................... 4
1.5. Significance of the study
1.6. Definition of the key terms

........................................................................................................ 4
...................................................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................... 6-11
2.1. The rationales for using peer-feedback in ESL (English as Second Language) and EFL (English as Foreign
Language) classrooms

6

2.2. Review of the prior studies on the use of peer-editing technique ............................................. 7
2.3. Summary and the scope of the current study ............................................................................ 10
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES................................................................ 12-21
3.1. Aims and Objectives ............................................................................................................... 12
3.2. Methodology

......................................................................................................................... 12

3.2.1. Population and sampling ............................................................................................... 12
3.2.2. Data collection ............................................................................................................. 15
3.2.2.1. Tests

.................................................................................................................. 15

3.2.2.2. Questionnaires .................................................................................................... 15
3.2.2.3. Interviews ........................................................................................................... 16
3.2.2.4. Classroom observation ........................................................................................ 16
3.3. Procedure

............................................................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .............................................................................. 22-36
4.1. Peer-editing has a positive influence on students’ writing skill in terms of accuracy and fluency
22
4.2. Peer-editing enhances students’ participation in the study........................................................ 31
4.3. The use of Peer-editing technique in the classroom creates a positive atmosphere, necessary for language
learners

........................................................................................................................... 33

4.4. Peer-editing technique is a welcoming tool to be employed in a writing classroom................. 35
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION ........................................................ 37-39
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY ..................................................................................................... 37
RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................. 38
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 40-42

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APPENDICE ................................................................................................................................. 43-60

LIST OF TABLES
List
Table 3.1
Table 4.1
Table 4.2
Table 4.3
Table 4.4
Table 4.5

Table 4.6
Table 4.7
Table 4.8
Table 4.9
Table 4.10
Table 4.11

Label

Chapter

Page

The detailed information of the research
procedure

Results of the pre-test & post-test of two
groups
T-Test on the EG’s results of two tests
T-test on the posttest results of two groups
T-test on the CG’s results of two tests
Report on the kind and number of errors
students of both groups made in the pre-&
post-test.
Report on the change in level of accuracy
within EG and CG
Report on the change in level of accuracy
between EG and CG
Report on two groups’ scores of fluency
T-test results on the comparison of posttest
scores between EG &CG

3

18-19

4

22

4
4
4
4

24

24
25
26

4

28

4

28

4
4

30
31

4

31

4

35

Appendix 2
Appendix 2
Appendix 2
Appendix 3

Appendix 3

45
46
46-47
48
49

Appendix 3
Appendix 11
Appendix 11

49-50
57
57

Appendix 11

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T-test results on the comparison of posttest
scores within EG
Report on the analyzed data of results from
post-questionnaires
Table of Raw data of pre-questionnaire
Table of statistics
Table of frequency
Table of Raw data
Table of Descriptive Statistics
Table of frequency

Table of Final Scores of Two Groups
Table of the Number of Errors of Two
Groups
Table of Scores of Fluency


5

Table of Scores of Accuracy

Appendix 11

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LIST OF FIGURES
List

Label

Chapter

Page

Figure 3.1
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 4.3

Chart of the Sampling Process
Change in the scores of CG
Change in the scores of EG
Report on the proportion of each error
type in students’ writings
Comparison of the number of errors
made by 2 groups in the pre. & posttest.
Standard deviation values of the
analyzed data.

3
4
4
4

14-15
23
23
27

4

28

4

35

Figure 4.4

Figure 4.5


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ABSTRACT
YZ
Many studies were done on the use of peer-editing technique and all shared the
same conclusion that it is a useful teaching tool to be employed in EFL/ ESL classrooms.
In this study, peer-editing technique was tried in a 14-week experimental course in which
30 senior English majors of the Foreign Languages Faculty were designated to learn
essay writing with this technique. During the experiment, students were asked to
exchange and to edit each other’s finished essays with the teacher’s guidance and the use
of peer-editing checklist. The results of the study show that the employment of peerediting activities in large and multilevel classes of writing can benefit both teaching and
learning: students’ participation in their study is highly promoted; their writing ability is
improved in terms of the level of accuracy and fluency and also a stimulating atmosphere
is created in the classroom.


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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Feedback is widely seen in education as crucial for both encouraging and
consolidating learning (Anderson, 1982; Brophy, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978) (as cited in
Hyland, K& Hyland, F(2005) and it is also regarded as a fundamental factor in the
writing context. Supporting this view, Williams (2003) states that written feedback is an
essential part of any language course that involves a writing element, and this has also
been recognized by those working in the field of second language writing. Virtually, for
a long time, product-approach has dominated writing pedagogy and teacher feedback is
used as the only way to respond to student writing. “Surveys of students’ references

indicate that ESL students greatly value teachers’ written feedback, and those coming
from cultures where teachers are highly directive generally welcome and expect teachers
to notice and comment on their errors and may feel resentful if their teachers do not do so
.“ (Hyland, K& Hyland, F, 2005: 4). While teacher feedback has been indicated to be
desirable for the development of student writing, there are still many debates on whether
it should be provided as it is often neglected and misunderstood by students. This is also
a great concern to teachers teaching writing including the researchers at Lac Hong
University (LHU).
1.1.

Statement of the problem


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It is true in nearly all the teaching and learning contexts of the Foreign Languages
Faculty (FLF) of LHU that teacher feedback is the dominant and the most preferable
mode. According to the results of the researchers’ survey on 120 English majors of batch
2007 conducted on May 15, 2010(see appendix 2), a majority of these English majors
prefer teacher’s feedback to their peers’. Up to 70.8% of the surveyed students just
trusted and appreciated teacher feedback. 65% of them said that they had used peers’
feedback, but they rarely did it. Thus, students tend to write only when they know that
their writings would be read and evaluated by their teachers, as the confession of 75.8%
of the respondents. Since students depend so much on the teachers, their practice
opportunity has been restricted. Concerning it, 60% of the students revealed in the
questionnaire that two is the average number of writings they usually produce for a
writing course and just a very small portion of the respondents (12.51%) have more than
2, which has been confirmed by the information obtained from the interviews with 4
writing teachers(see appendix 6). According to those students, they were demotivated
from practicing writing due to four main reasons: The first and also the leading reason is

that they have no one to read and comment their writings (41.7% of the respondents); the
second one is due to the difficulties they have in writing in terms of grammar and
structure (31.7%); the third one is due to their occupied timetable at school(19.2%) and
the last one is that they do not feel it imperative to write(7.5%). What is worse,
according to the survey, is students’ lack of practice, which is one of the causes of their
failure in learning writing. In fact, many teachers of writing have been trying their best to
help students, but very little success has been achieved due to the giant sizes of the
classes there. Regarding it, 3 out of 4 teacher-interviewees clarified that the big size of
the writing class usually discouraged them from giving their students lots of chances to
write because correction work always took them much time to do. Because of the lack of
systematic practice, English students including high-level ones cannot write (Baskoff,
1990). While students said they were badly in need of teachers’ feedback, in reality, few
of them take it properly. When being asked about their responses to kinds of teacher


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feedback, a majority of students admitted that marks were what they expected or were
eager to see first when getting the writing assignments back from the teacher; only about
26.7% of the students paid attention to the teachers’ comments and corrections, but they
did no follow-up based on the teachers’ remarks in the returned writings; and just 5%
made a good use of teacher feedback. This fact explains why many students usually make
the same errors over and over again although those mistakes have been explained to them
for many times. Obviously, once students do not want to revise their writing based on
feedback, teachers’ feedback is useless (Chandler, 2003).
In short, teachers teaching writing in general and essay writing in particular at FLF
of LHU are now sharing the same fiasco in enabling their students to practice sufficiently
and in drawing students’ attention to their feedback, all of which have negatively affected
the results of both teaching and learning. Thus, being teachers of writing, we have been
strongly urged by the long-lasting wish to find out an effective way to help ourselves as

well as our colleagues positively modify our teaching contexts for the sake of students’
progress.

1.2. Justification of the study
With the development of writing pedagogy, in addition to teacher feedback, new
feedback modes are burgeoning and varied feedback techniques are explored. Among the
feedback techniques have been studied, peer-editing proves to be advantageous to some
extent. Particularly, in our research we decided upon it for some primary reasons, which
have been carefully considered in relation to the specific context of FLF. First, peerediting is an interactive technique for stimulating students to actively work with their
peers through the exchange of their first drafts of the text. Second, it helps students
realize the changes they need (e.g. for better organization, paragraph divisions, sentence
variety, and vocabulary choice). Third, it is suitable for big classes with multi-levels like
those at LHU, where teachers have big difficulties maintaining their role as the primary
communicator with the students via one-on- one interaction. This creates ground for the


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hope that the workload teachers usually take individually would be shared, saving them
more time to develop their own teaching instead of spending most of the time editing
students ‘writing, and that students would get used to sources of feedback other than
teachers’, so they would be motivated to write more outside the classroom. Moreover,
with group work in the classroom, teachers could avoid the” homework syndrome” that
usually results in the situation in which writing lessons are quiet [thus de-motivated] so
that the teacher can easily maintain the classroom control (Hadfield and Hadfield, 1990).
Last but not least, peer-editing, according to Johnson, J.H.(1983), can promote students’
confidence which is vital to language learning. In brief, the technique of peer-editing was
chosen to discuss in this paper because of its potential advantages and its suitability to the
specific features of the learning and teaching conditions at LHU.
1.3. Research questions

From the above rationales, two questions were expected to be addressed in the research.
1. To what extent can peer-editing technique help better the context of teaching and
learning essay-writing at the Foreign Languages Department of LHU?
2. What are students’ responses to the use of this technique?
1.4. Hypotheses
It was hypothesized that peer-editing technique with its own advantages would be
a technique suitable for being applied to the teaching of essay-writing at the Foreign
Languages Faculty, LHU and the application would bring about significant changes in
students’ learning of this subject in terms of their improvement in the writing ability and
their enhanced level of participation in the classroom activities.
1.5. Significance of the study
Writing is one of the four basic skills in the curriculum of English major, which is
taught from the first to the third year. Moreover it is fundamental in relation to other
subjects in that students could be asked to produce either sentence, or a short paragraph
or even an essay when they learn reading, translation, listening, or even speaking…and
especially, essay writing is a compulsory part of the graduation exam or of any entrance


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exams for a post-graduate course. However, essay writing has not ever been taught and
learnt satisfactorily, for which students’ insufficient participation in their study is the
main reason. In order to be more actively involved in the learning, students need to be
independent. It means that they should get rid of the habit of relying on their teachers as
the only source of knowledge or of feedback in the context of learning writing. In respect
to the indicated potential effectiveness of peer-feedback, the researchers believe that the
success of the experiment on the use of peer-editing technique in teaching essay writing
would bring numerous benefits to both teachers and students of FLF. Particularly,
students would be trained to be more dynamic and more self-reliant in their study, which
is one of the leading requirements, that LHU’s current curriculum plays a very strong

emphasis on. Similarly, correction work load would not be a challenge to teachers of
writing and thus teaching writing will be more appealing to teachers of languages than is
it now.
1.6. Definition of the key terms
• Feedback: information given in response to a product, a person's performance of a
task, etc., used as a basis for improvement (Oxford English Dictionary, 2004)
• “Peer” is someone equal to the learner such as his/ her classmate or fellow student
(Oxford English Dictionary, 2004).
• “Peer editing (or peer reviewing)” is an instructional strategy in which a student
evaluates another student’s work and provides feedback. This is a standard
strategy used in writing courses across the curriculum.(Achieved from
en.wikitionary.org)
• “Peer responses” refer to student’ s comments and correction on his/ her peer’s
writing in terms of organization, tone, flow, grammar, punctuation, and even
content.( Achieved from en.wikitionary.org)
• “Editing” is the process of preparing a written material for publication by
correcting, condensing, or modifying it. ( Achieved from en.wikitionary.org)


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• Writing process is seen as consisting of 5 stages: prewriting, drafting, editing,
revising and publishing. ( Achieved from en.wikitionary.org)

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. The rationales for using peer-feedback in ESL (English as a Second Language)
and EFL(English as a Foreign Language) classrooms
The use of peer feedback is justified by numerous concepts in education such as
the process approach to the teaching of writing. Proponents of peer responses have a long
history of theory and research to support their beliefs. Hansen and Liu (2005)report that

peer response is supported by several theoretical framework, including process writing,
collaborative learning theory, and interaction and second language acquisition(SLA). It
also matches well with the five basic principles of cooperative learning proposed by
Johnson (1983), which are positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-toface interaction, interpersonal and small group skills, and group processing. In addition,
De Guerrero & Villamil (2000)’s further exploration on the previous work by
Wertsch(1979) determines that guidance provided by another assists an individual in his/
her development and awareness. According to those researchers, in the transition from
inter-psychological functioning, the learner moves from stages of other regulation to
complete self-regulation, the stage when he or she is capable of independent problem-


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solving. This is needed for learners of today’s language classrooms because if “language
is ‘part of social interaction and behavior,’ we are compelled to consider the
communicative value of language and introduce the process of interaction into the
classroom” (Swan 1985:9). In the process approach, the focus of attention has moved
from the finished product to the whole process of writing: experience and question,
previewing preparation, draft writing, editing and rewriting, publication or sharing, and
response and feedback from the readers. In this way, teachers will not be the exclusive
source of feedback as it usually takes places in traditional classrooms. Peer-feedback
should be encouraged. As the peer editors can compensate for one’s strong points and
deficiencies, it helps the writer as well as the editors overcome their “private way of
thinking, their habits and their biases and preconceptions”(Bruffee 1980:103). Vital peerfeedback will also provide students with a chance to see their essay from another’s
perspective and thus to be able to improve their work. In short, whatever the method is,
the benefit of peer-feedback is endless, as Rollinson pointed out:
Peer feedback, with its potentially high level of response and interaction between reader
and writer can encourage a collaborative dialogue in which two-way feedback is
established and meaning is negotiated between the two parties. It also fosters highly
complex socio- cognitive interactions involving arguing, explaining, clarifying and

justifying.
(2005: 25)

2.2. Review of the prior studies on the use of peer-editing technique
The widely- adopted technique of peer- response in language 1(L1), language
2(L2) and foreign language (Fl) classes has enriched the teaching of writing in many
ways. A great number of earlier studies carried out by L1 and L2 researchers have dealt
with the implementation of peer- editing and its ability to improve students ‘drafts. In L1
studies, Nystrand and Brabdt(1989) and Gere and Stevens (1995) found the oral
discussion in peer response to be very beneficial to young and adult learners. L2 studies
looked into the social interaction of peers in term of types of students’ talk(Lockhart &
Ng, 1995; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Nelson & Murphy, 1992; Villamil & De


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Guerrero, 1996) together with the attitudes of students to peer feedback in terms of their
perceptions of its effectiveness (Mangelsdorf, 1992). Researchers of L2 writing have
marked a variety of behaviors, interaction styles, and reactions among peer group
members during peer response sessions. Mendonca and Johnson (1994) realized that
students use different functions during negotiations: asking questions, offering
explanations, making suggestions, restating what their peers have written, and correcting
grammar mistakes. And as Guerrero and Villamil (1996) reported, in peer groups,
activities consisted of reading, assessing, dealing with trouble sources, and discussing
task procedures. In a writing classroom, during a cooperative learning process, students
review and comment on each other’s writing as peers who collaborate in order to give
insight and knowledge to each other, thus, peer- reviewing can be seen as powerful
learning tool incorporating reading and writing practice and such a view summarizing the
contemporary social constructivist theory of learning (Gousseva, 1998). Moreover,
“reviewing and evaluation are greatly enhanced by having more than one person working

on it, and the generation of ideas is frequently more lively with two or more people
involved than it is when writers work on their own” (Harmer, 2001: 260). Engaging
students in the feedback process, meaningful interaction increases—interaction with
peers and interaction with the content of the discussion postings—which subsequently
promotes students' satisfaction with the course (Swan, 1985). Rollison (2005) mentioned
other effective advantages of peer-editing technique including the perception that the
peers are less threatening, less authoritative, friendlier and more supportive than the
instructor and that by giving the students practice in becoming critical readers, we are at
the same time helping them towards becoming more self-reliant writers who are both
self-critical and have the skills to self-edit and revise their writing. Once students have
been familiar to editing skill, the burden for dealing with errors thus shifts from the
teacher to students. Besides, peer-editing has also proven a welcoming activity when
used in any ESL and EFL classrooms of writing. In the study on 38 first-year Turkish
university students about the value of reflection in writing, Arden Arikan(2006) reported


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that” the positive points that the students found in peer viewing were that it made them
get opinion of many different individuals and this helped them improve their work”(p.7).
Zheng Chunxian, Zh( 2007) in his study on Peer Error Feedback gained a conclusion that
peer error feedback is a good choice in the EFL teaching context in which the work of
teachers’ error feedback is a “tedious chore”. Finally, after researching adopting varied
feedback modes in the EFL writing class, Li Mi-mi (2009) stated that peer feedback
could help train students to be a critical reader as well as a confident writer.
Not all the studies of peer reaction show unqualified positive effects on revision,
however. Some studies suggest negative consequences as well. The first disadvantage of
this technique is that not all students take peer feedback seriously and also their
feedbacks are just overall comments like “ good” or” well-written”, from which their
peers benefit very little. In relation to this fact, Zheng Chunxian, Zh( 2007) explained

that students errors are various and sometimes those errors are out of the range of
students’ language proficiency. Adding to this point, LI Mi-mi (2009:2) clarified “peerresponse cannot achieve fruitful results because students are not knowledgeable enough
to detect and correct errors or students tend to withhold critical comments so as to
maintain group harmony”. And once students cannot review their peers’ writings
appropriately, they are likely not to trust their peers reviews (Nelson & Carson, 1998). In
short, those studies pointed out that there were differences between L1 and L2 and
claimed that a lack of language proficiency in L2 affects peer-review. Gere and Stevens
(1985) looked at a fifth-grade writing class to determine if the oral responses provided by
groups to individual writers shaped the subsequent revisions in what they were writing.
The study found both positive and negative results. Student writers were challenged by
their peers "to clarify, to provide more detail" (p. 95) as the peer reacters asked questions
when they were confused, and suggested ways to improve the writing. Some student
writers integrated their peers' suggestions into subsequent revisions. Yet there were
incidents of unproductive, even hostile, verbal exchange, and in some groups students
hurried through the group work in a "robotlike monotone." A case study of four children


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with low, average, and high abilities in writing (Russell, 1985) examined the relationship
between peer conferencing and revision. The results indicated that in revising, poor
writers were dependent on the questions of other students, whereas average and good
writers tended to become their own audience and revise on their own. Another case study
conducted with freshmen (Berkenkotter, 1983) sought to find out how students interact in
their writing groups and whether writers improve their texts as a result of the interactions.
The research revealed that the students' attitudes toward assistance from their peers varied
considerably, as did the writers' approaches toward revision. One student, Stan, was too
immature to heed his audience. Because of her sensitivity to audience, another student,
Joann, became vulnerable to unwarranted criticism. Although a third student, Pat, felt
responsible to his audience, he felt a greater obligation to his emerging text and revised

independently of peer suggestions. The study concluded that students writing for an
audience of peers as well as their teacher do not necessarily benefit from their
peers'suggestions. An experimental study (Rijlaarsdam, 1987) looked at peer feedback
among 11 classes of eighth-grade students in eight Dutch schools. The control group
received teacher feedback; the experimental group received peer feedback. Although the
study had hypothesized that there would be more frequent evaluation and revision in the
experimental group, the results showed no differences between the two.
2.3. Summary in relation to the scope of the current study
In short, 16 studies of researchers from Western and Eastern Countries have
proved peer-editing technique an effective tool to be used not only in EFL but also ESL
classrooms, especially in teaching writing; however, those researchers have also pointed
out that this technique still has some limitations. They are students’low trust in peer
responses and the possibility of error spread among students, all of which are due to
learners restricted level of language proficiency. Therefore, the researchers considered
peer-editing technique as the subject of their research for two main aims: First, the
researchers would like to know if peer-editing would work at its best in the contexts of
writing classes of LHU, where most classes are composed of at least 40 students with


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mixed levels, so as to be an effective teaching aid to teachers of writing here; second, the
researcher would like to see if they could deal with the disadvantages of the technique.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1. Aims and Objectives
This research was done for two primary goals. First, it aimed to measure how
effective peer-editing technique is in teaching essay-writing so as to be implemented in
the real context of FLD of LHU with regard to the benefits it could bring to students of
the experiment. Then, it intended to explore students’ attitudes toward the employment of

the novel method.
3.2. Methodology
Considering the aims and objectives of the study, a combination of qualitative and
quantitative approaches was used to carry out the research.
3.2.1. Population and sampling
The population of this study is defined as all the junior English majors of LHU.
They have been learning writing in 6 successive terms (2 for sentence, 2 for paragraph
and 2 for essay writing). In this study, the researchers chose on students of batch 2007,
who have just finished the third year, instead of those of batch 2008, who start the third
year, for 3 main reasons. First, the target of the study is to find out if peer-editing
technique can help students be more independent in their practice chance. In order to do
it, students need to write a lot and to do much editing, all of which requires students


19

certain knowledge of essay writing; thus, the choice on batch 2007 of which students
have just finished two courses of essay-writing enabled the researchers more time to
focus on their experiment. In addition, these students have learnt essay writing and also
they are in third year of school, so they know more clearly than anyone else how difficult
and important this subject is; thus, reliable data would be ensured.
The participants were chosen and used as follow: All of 120 English majors from
4 classes of batch 2007 were to respond to a questionnaire which was administered at the
beginning of the study to help the researchers look further into the problem that English
majors cannot learn essay-writing effectively and that they are not actively engaged in
their learning. Out of these 120 students, 110 students of three day-time classes (07av111,
112 and 113) were focused to select the subjects for the experiment. Students of evening
class- 07AV101 were excluded from the experiment due to the reason of convenience. In
particular, from those 110 students, 60 were chosen by systematic random sampling. The
sampling was proceeded in three phase as described in fig. 3.1.

11
Class
07av111:
44
students

Grouped
Into 4

11

Randomly chosen:
6 from each 11

24

11

11

8
Class
07av111:
32
students

Grouped
Into 4

8

Randomly chosen:
6 from each 8

24

Randomly chosen:
6from each 8 and 9

24

8
8

8

Class
07av111:
34
students

8
Grouped
Into 4

9
9

Layer 1:72 samples

20

12

12
Grouped
into 6

72

12

Randomly chosen:
10 from each 12

Layer 2: 60 samples

12
12

12

10
10
10

60

Grouped

into 6

30
Randomly chosen

Layer 3: 2 groups of 30

10
30
10
10

Figure. 3.1 Chart of the Sampling Process

Those 60 samples were then divided into 2 groups: control group (CG) and experimental
group (EG) with equal number. Each group stands for a class with mixed sex and levels
for the reliability. After the experiment, 30 students of EG were planned to answer a
questionnaire about their attitudes toward the use of new teaching technique. Also, some
students of this group who had the striking results in the posttest- both highest and lowest
scores- were interviewed for further insights into their achievements or their
unsuccessfulness.
In addition to students, the participants of the study also include 4 teachers- 2
males and 2 females- who have been teaching English at FLF for at least 5 years and
have over- 2-year experience in teaching writing. These teachers were interviewed for
deeper thoughts in to the researchers’ identified problem. Also, two of them were asked
to help the researchers with marking the tests.
3.2.2. Data collection