The Effect of MILITARY Academy’s Writing Course for Military Cadets’ Writing Proficiency

This study examined the effects of a military academy’s writing education program on the cadets’ development of short- and long-term writing performance with topics of military document. It intends to prove whether intensive writing course participants demonstrate higher grades at the end of a semester compared to non-participants. As academic writing is one of the most important objectives of college education, many universities and colleges offer short- and long-term writing courses for their students. Some of the courses are required, not optional, then the students need to participate in the intensive or developmental course to fulfill the writing assignments. Military officers have to write a daily report, drill & training plan, personnel management report, and many other military documents in their daily routine. They, for their duties, need more than intermediate level of writing proficiency for their long-term career development. Most of the military academies, therefore, offer writing courses in their regular curriculum to satisfy the cadets educational need. Korea Army Academy at Yeong-choen (KAAY) educates and trains cadets as commissioned officers for Republic Korea Army (ROKA) who are fully equipped with competencies as commanding officers and staffs. Military cadets of KAAY, however, are not provided with writing courses in their regular curriculum although they need more than intermediate-level writing proficiency. For the purpose of this study, 23 participants of the writing program were employed as treatment group and another 23 non-participants were employed as control group. Two research questions guided the study: First, do the military cadets who participate in a military academy’s intensive writing course differ from non-participants in regard to writing test score? Second, is there a difference between cumulative grade point average for participants of the intensive writing course and non-participants? The independent variable of the study was defined as participation in the extra-curricular writing course. Participants were those cadets who fully completed the writing course for two months. Non-participants were those cadets who tested into the pretest writing assignment of military resume of less than 3 pages while participants and the non-participants were assigned posttest of writing a document of inauguration remark as a platoon leader. The first dependent variable was the grade of the diagnostic test on both treatment and control groups and the second dependent variable was the grade of the posttest. A t test was conducted to compare the mean pretest writing scores of both treatment and control groups. No significant difference was found between treatment group (M = 61.31, SD = 10.53) and control group (M =62.07, SD = 9.86), t(df=62) = - 1.03, p = .46. The results of the t test proved the equivalence of the both groups in the regard of writing proficiency. A covariance test of posttest score of writing was conducted to investigate whether a significant difference existed between the mean writing grades of posttest showed a significant difference. The treatment group (M = 73.85, SD = 12.08) demonstrated a higher mean writing grade on posttest(inauguration remark) than the control group (M = 65.29, SD = 11.04), F(1, 54) = 2.23, p = .03 with the covariate of pretest score.