EFL Learners’ English Writing Performance in Different Writing Task Types

The study aims at examining the effects of different writing task types on EFL learners’ English writing performance. In this study, 18 college students (15 males and 3 females) were asked to write four different types of writing (descriptive, process, comparison/contrast and dialogue journal) with a pre- and post-writing tests. The writing samples were analyzed with three categories: writing performance, quantity (number of words), and complexity (number of words per T-unit, clause connectors per word, and number of And out of the connectors). The results are as follows: 1) a significant difference of the learners’ English writing performance in the pre- and post-tests was revealed, while no difference was found across the four writing task types; 2) dialogue journals were significantly shorter, while the process essay was the most complex type of writing; and 3) significant differences were found in using clause connectors and And across the writing types. This suggests that the teacher needs to encourage her students to perform a variety of writing tasks to promote their writing ability as well as to measure it more accurately.