Reading-Based Writing: A Model to Foster EFL Learners’ Academic Writing Skill

Abstract

Writing is often regarded as a difficult skill to acquire by majority of EFL learners. Teaching writing is also unquestionably challenging. It is argued that an essential effort to enable learners to write better is to assign them to explore as much information through reading topic and genrerelated sources both online and offline. This article aims to test the effectiveness of a model of teaching writing, called Reading –Based Writing. This model is a product of an R&D conducted in a university in Padang. There are two groups of students involved; experimental and control group. Experimental research was taught using Reading-Based Writing Model, while control group was taught with Genre Based Approach. Two genres (descriptive and analytical text) were taught in 8 meetings of this experimental. Based on the result of analysis, it was found that students in experimental group outperformed students in control group which indicates that Reading Based Writing Model is significantly effective to foster students’ academic writing skill.