Effect of Extensive Reading on Grammatical Accuracy and Fluency of EFL Learners' Writing Performance

Abstract

Learning and teaching a foreign language requires gaining mastery of all four skills involved in every natural language; however, developing writing ability is a skill which has received slight attention in Iranian context both by teachers and learners. In order to improve students' writing skill and encourage them to write creatively and also to provide teachers with various strategies for teaching writing, different solutions have been proposed. One of these techniques can be extensive reading. The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of extensive reading on EFL learners' writing performance. To this end, thirty female advanced EFL learners participated in this study. As the pre-test, the participants wrote a paragraph on one of the topics of their course book. As the post-test they wrote a paragraph on a similar topic. In this study the learners’ paragraphs were assessed using Jacobs et al.’s (1981) scale which is based on the content, organization, vocabulary, language used and mechanics. The obtained results revealed that extensive reading had an effect on general writing performance of the learners and it enhanced the learners' fluency in writing. However, it was found that extensive reading had no effect on the accuracy of learners' writing.