The Effect of Strategic Writing Techniques on Promoting Thai EFL Students' Writing Skills

Abstract

This study was aimed to investigate the effect of strategic writing techniques in promoting Thai EFL students’ writing skills. It also aimed to explore the students’ attitudes toward teaching strategic writing techniques. The participants were eighty Thai EFL high school students at the tenth grade or Mattayomsuksa4. This study was quasi-experimental research. The participants were divided into two groups: 40 students in the experimental group and 40 students in the control group. The students in the experimental group were taught through strategic writing techniques with the combination of STOP strategy and POWER strategy, and the control group students were taught through the traditional instruction. The research instruments included a writing pre-test and post-test, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. The data was computed using the SPSS package program. The current study revealed that the students’ writing skills in both groups improved significantly. However, the experimental group which received strategic writing techniques outperformed the control group which received traditional instruction. The results of the improvement on the students’ writing skills on the post-test showed the mean score of the experimental group was 20.26 and the mean score of the control group was 12.67. There is a significant difference at 0.01, and the t-value is 12.610. To conclude, the implementation of teaching strategic writing techniques by using the combination of STOP and POWER strategies was more effective than the traditional instruction in promoting the students’ writing skills and the students demonstrated a positive attitude at high level toward teaching using strategic writing techniques.

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