A Comparison of the Effects of Task Repetition and Elicitation Techniques on EFL Learners’ Expository and Descriptive Writing

Abstract

Due to the significance of the methods and techniques teachers use to engage learners in the learning process, many studies have been conducted on them. Accordingly, this study aimed at finding out the impact of two techniques, task repetition and elicitation, on EFL learners’ expository and descriptive writing ability. For this purpose, seventy 10th-grade female students in four intact classes were selected based on convenience sampling. First, Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used to check their homogeneity and 56 who were in the acceptable range were selected. The classes were then randomly divided into two experimental groups, task repetition group (TG) and elicitation techniques group (EG), each comprising two classes. To measure the learners’ writing ability, two pretests of expository and descriptive writing were administered to both groups. During the study, TG received expository and descriptive topics to write about and one week later, the same topics were offered to be written about again. In EG, each session the participants received a writing task and the teacher used question and answer about the topics before learners were assigned to write about them. These were done several times during the study in each group. At the end, two posttests of expository and descriptive writing similar to the pretests were administered. The results of repeated-measures two-way ANOVA and MANOVA showed that both task repetition and elicitation techniques had positive effects on expository and descriptive writing of EFL learners; however, TG outperformed EG in their expository writing. Further conclusions are discussed.

Keywords

• descriptive writing
• elicitation techniques
• expository writing
• task repetition
• writing