Effects of writing genre on EFL learners' English writing performance

쓰기 장르가 EFL 학습자들의영어 쓰기 수행에 미치는 영향

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of writing genre on EFL learners' English writing performance. In this study, 113 college students participated, and were divided into three groups according to their pre-writing test scores. Samples of the participants' descriptive and narrative writing were collected. Their writing samples were scored by one native English speaker and one of the authors of this study. It was found that there existed a meaningful relationship between writing genres and students' English writing performance. The test score of the narrative writing was significantly higher than that of the descriptive writing. This result was corroborated by the analysis of survey data in which the participants reported that they felt the narrative writing was easier than the descriptive. Furthermore, a remarkable difference of English writing performance was revealed among low-level students who, from every analytical perspective, were shown to have performed much better when writing narrative than descriptive texts. This suggests that English writing teachers need to be attentive to the relationship between genre and the purpose of writing.