Arab World English Journal (November 2012) Theses / Dissertation
The Effect of the Reciprocal Technique and the Technique Described in the Teacher’s Guide on the Jordanian Secondary Students’ Writing Skills in English
Name of researcher: Ahmad Fayez Mutlaq Al-Zu’be
Title of the thesis/dissertation: The Effect of the Reciprocal Technique and the Technique Described in the Teacher’s Guide on the Jordanian Secondary Students’ Writing Skills in English
Subject/major: English Language
University name, department name: Amman Arab University for Graduate Studies/ Graduate College of Educational Studies
Degree: PhD
Year of award: 2006
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the reciprocal teaching technique and the technique described in the Teacher’s Guide on the Jordanian secondary stage students’ in English writing skills in the governorate of Jerash. The Subject of the study consisted of seventy eight male students in the first secondary class. The students were purposefully chosen from AlQabsi Secondary School for males in the academic year 2005/2006. The experimental and control groups were assigned into three groups. This study attempted at answering the main following question and the four sub skills: Are there any significant differences in the students’ mean scores of the two experimental groups and the control group on the total score of the English writing achievement post-test due to the teaching technique? The researcher prepared a program based on the reciprocal teaching technique for one of the experimental groups and used the technique described in the Teachers’ Guide for the second experimental group, while the control group was taught according to its own teachers’ technique. At the end of the experiment, the post-test was administered for the three groups. Before carrying out the experiment, a pre-test of writing achievement composition was administered to the three groups in order to measure students’ actual level of writing composition by calculating mean scores and standard deviations of the three groups. ANCOVA and MANCOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Covariance) were used to examine the significance of the treatment on the dependant variable. ANCOVA indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the total score of the writing achievement post-test mean scores among the three groups in favor of the two experimental groups. Post-hoc pair wise comparisons using LSD method was used and showed that there were significant differences in the total score of the writing achievement post-test mean scores between the two experimental groups in favor of the reciprocal teaching technique group. MANCOVA was used and showed that there were statistically significant differences among the three groups in the sub skills of the writing achievement post-test (ideas, organization, vocabulary and grammar) in favor of the two experimental groups. Post-hoc pair wise comparisons using LSD method was used to find whether those differences were significant. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two experimental groups in some sub skills of the writing achievement post-test (ideas, vocabulary and grammar) in favor of the reciprocal teaching technique group. Results revealed that the writing achievement of the students of the experimental groups significantly improved. The researcher recommended that the reciprocal technique and the technique described by the Ministry of Education could be used in teaching EFL writing. Applying the writing program through reciprocal technique provided opportunities to design texts and help students develop writing step by step. The researcher proposed suggestions for further research.
Keywords: Reciprocal Technique, Writing Skills.