Cooperative Learning: The Effects of Prediction Task on Iranian EFL Writing Improvement

The Purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of prediction task on improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing improvement. To this end the researcher delivered the first one or two beginning sentences of a text and provided some essential vocabularies and asked the learners to predict the original text cooperatively. Twenty students studying English as a foreign language in an Institute at intermediate level in Khoramabad, Iran were chosen. An experimental design was utilized for the present study. The instrument used in this study was individual writing as pretest and group writing as posttest. Treatment lasted 14 sessions or about two months, twice in a week. Paired and independent sample t-tests were used to answer the research question. The results of the pretest and posttest in data analysis through statistical procedure such as PairedT-Test confirmed the superiority of the experimental groups and group writing instruction helped to improve group writing, resulting in the rejection of the null hypotheses. The results and finding shows that providing necessary vocabularies at the start of the instruction facilitate writing and motivate learners to stay focused. It also reduces linguistic and cognitive demanding

Keywords:

Critical thinking , Content-based instruction , Prediction task