Enhancing Learners’ EFL Writing Performance through Extensive Reading Strategy Training into the Writing Process

Abstract

It is logical to anticipate that teaching one will lead to the student’s proficiency in the other because the reading and writing processes are correlated and, in many cases, combined. The goal was to find out how extended reading strategy training (ERST) affected first-year undergraduate students’ writing abilities. Thirty-one of the 61 undergraduate participants from Wollega University were placed in the control group and 30 were placed in the experimental group. Interviews and tests on the ability to write paragraphs were used to gather the data over the course of 10 weeks. The following criteria were evaluated: the capacity to handle the specified issue, well-developed thoughts, well-organised concepts, acceptable transitions, unity, coherence, syntactic diversity, and idiomaticity with few lexical or grammatical faults. The interview data were evaluated thematically, while the quantitative results were primarily studied using analysis of covariance. The results show that ERST significantly improves the writing abilities of the students. This outcome is consistent with past research that showed extensive reading to be helpful in enhancing students’ writing abilities and offers valuable information on the significance of including the ERST programme into the writing process in writing courses.