Abstract:
This study investigated the effects of two independent variables including Discourse Markers’ (DMs) instruction as well as teacher and peers’ corrections on the Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ writing scores. The participants of the study were 60 EFL male learners. To examine the impacts of explicit instruction of DMs, the participants were divided into two groups of 30. One of the researchers as the EFL teacher taught the key DMs including consequences, reasons, additions and contrastives to the experimental group, while no DMs were taught to the control group. Independent sample t-test results showed a significant difference in EFL learners’ post-test writing scores in two groups. In fact, the experimental group (M = 2.40, SD = 4.35) outperformed the control group (M = 0.47, SD = 1.70) due to DMs’ use. Also an independent sample t-test was applied to compare the teacher’s and peers’ ratings in 3 writing tasks. These writings were scored analytically according to Jacobs et al. (1981) scale. The results showed a significant difference between two groups’ ratings; peers had given higher ratings (M = 85.63, SD = 10) than what the teacher had given (M = 80.71, SD = 7.97). The conclusions of this study revealed that: 1) cooperative learning activities could improve the writing skills in EFL classes, and 2) All of the components of an acceptable piece of writing, that is, content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics could be enhanced through cooperative learning activities. The implications and suggestions for further research were also formulated.
Machine summary:
Peers Corrections and the Explicit Instruction of DMs on Iranian EFL Learners’ Writing Scores Mahdy Dayyani1,and Shokouh Rashvand Semiyari2* 1Department of English Language Teaching, West Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran 2Department of English Language Teaching, East Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran mahdytefl@gmail.
com Received: 2019-04-26 Accepted: 2019-06-29 *Corresponding Author Abstract This study investigated the effects of two independent variables including Discourse Markers’ (DMs) instruction as well as teacher and peers’ corrections on the Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ writing scores.
In a study handled by Assadi-Aidinlou and Shahrokhi mehr (2012), it was proved that if students know more about discourse markers, their texts are proved to be more efficient and cohesive, since results have shown that there were statistically significant differences between learners who received instruction and those who did not.
DMs have been also studied in classroom oral discourse (Hays, 1992), informal settings (Lee, 1999; Muller, 2004; Trillo, 2002), reading (Abdollahzadeh, 2006; Jalilifar & Alipour, 2007), lectures (Dailey-O’Cain, 2000; Perez & Macia, 2002), academic genres (Abdi, 2002; Blagojevic, 2004; Bunton, 1999; Longo, 1994; Mauranen, 1993; Ventola & Mauranen, 1991), and student writings (Connor, 1984; Field & Yip, 1992; Intraprawat & Steffensen, 1995; Johns, 1984; Johnson, 1992; Karasi, 1994; Norment, 1994; Steffensen & Cheng, 1996).
While L2 writing teachers might have an idea about the most effective response that they must use at classrooms, investigations showed that teachers’ feedback and learners’ opinions may not be the same (Montgomery & Baker, 2007; Storch & Tapper, 2000).