Abstract
This chapter studied the effectiveness of using an intervention based on the process-writing approach (PWA) in a pre-university English programme at one of the private universities in Lebanon. The participants have different language backgrounds and they were all taking a remedial English course to enhance their second (L2) or foreign language (L3) skills. A qualitative case study was conducted, and three types of data collection instruments were used: pre and post writing tests, semi-structured interviews and field notes. The findings of the study showed the effectiveness of the PWA intervention in this context. The post-test showed improvement in several academic areas for all participants, the interviews showed improved attitudes towards writing and the observations showed that students learned better organizational skills, gained increased confidence and became more engaged in the writing exercise. The discussion is divided into three parts: students’ previous writing experiences, students’ usage of the process writing approach and students’ attitude towards the process writing approach. The results emphasized the importance of teaching writing in Lebanon more like a workshop where students are taught several effective strategies with some control over what to write and how to write starting with lower classes at school.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Test topics
Diagnostic test topics and Post-test topics
Option 1: Write a paragraph of 150 words on celebrating special occasions.
Option 2: Write a paragraph of 150 words on sleep habits.
Option 3: Write a paragraph of 150 words on exercise.
Appendix 2: Analytical rating scale
See Table 2.
Appendix 3: Interview questions
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Al Khalili, T. (2020). Changing Practices to Overcome Writing Difficulties in EFL Courses at University: A Lebanese Case Study. In: McCallum, L., Coombe, C. (eds) The Assessment of L2 Written English across the MENA Region. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53254-3_12
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