A Study of the Impact of Integrated Reading-Writing Tasks on Korean EFL Students’ Writing Development

Abstract

This study examines the effects of integrated reading-writing tasks (i.e., awarenessraising literacy activity) on Korean EFL college students’ writing development and their perception of the task. During a semester, the students mined linguistic, organizational features of text while reading, shared some features they had noticed during the whole class reporting session, and wrote an essay related to the theme of the text read. Data were collected through pre- and post-tests and interviews. A pretest and a post-test were administered to the students at the beginning and end of a semester, and the test results were contrasted in terms of overall quality of writing, syntactic complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Analysis of essays on pre- and posttests revealed that the students made significant improvement in overall writing, accuracy, and fluency, but not in syntactic development. Analysis of interview data showed the students positively perceived the integrated reading-writing tasks in relation to enhanced noticing of linguistic features, more opportunities to use the features, and a use of more diverse expressions in their writing. The overall results of the current study support the effectiveness of the integrative approaches to language instruction. It highlights the significance of well-designed integrated literacy tasks for improving students’ writing performance.