A goal-based writing program in the EFL writing context: implementation and results

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the current study is to explore the potential impact of a goal-based writing program on EFL students’ writing competence and their attitudes toward goal-setting activities. The goal-based writing program was developed within goal-setting theory and launched in a writing class of 39 EFL Vietnamese university students over ten weeks. To evaluate the success of the program, students’ writing scores were collected and subjected to a statistical analysis, and their perspectives toward goal setting were examined through semi-structured interviews. Strong evidence was found in support of the custom goal-based writing program. In terms of students’ writing achievement, significant improvement was seen in all four writing areas, namely, task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy, with coherence and cohesion demonstrating the most significant development. Regarding students’ perspectives, the current goal-based writing program was found to improve their learning motivation and autonomy while creating a more supportive learning environment. However, the interview data indicate that students became less committed to goal setting at the end of the program. Valuable pedagogical implications and useful guidelines on the implementation of the goal-based writing program in the EFL context are highlighted in the current study.

KEYWORDS:

• Goal setting
• writing achievement
• EFL students’ perspectives
• writing autonomy
• learning motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The researcher is currently a lecturer of English at a university in Vietnam. He holds an advanced degree in TESOL and has over six years of teaching IELTS writing.

2 At the beginning, Group 1 consisted of 29 participants, while Group 2 included 26. After attrition, 22 participants remained in Group 1, and 17 in Group 2.

3 The final Saturday of the course was saved for the posttest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported through a Summer College Research Abroad Monies(SCRAM) Grant from the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University.

Notes on contributors

Quy Huynh Phu Pham

Quy Huynh Phu Pham received his MA in TESOL from Michigan State University. He is a Fulbright scholar currently working as a lecturer of English at Ton Duc Thang University, Vietnam. His research interests include learner autonomy, learning motivation, second language writing, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics.