The Effect of Handwriting on Developing Kurdish Undergraduate EFL Students’ Descriptive Paragraph Writing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.30.SpB.38Keywords:
Handwriting, Descriptive Paragraph, Writing Performance, Autonomy, EFL StudentsAbstract
Writing is considered one of the most essential skills that EFL students need for communication in academia and their future professions. However, it is deemed challenging by various scholars in the field of teaching and learning. The current study aims to find out the effect of utilizing the handwriting (re-writing) technique on developing Kurdish EFL students’ descriptive paragraph writing. The sample of the study consists of 66 students who are divided into two groups of 33 students each. One group is assigned as a control group that is taught conventionally, while the second group is assigned as an experimental group in which, along with the module content, participants are required to handwrite extra supplemental materials such as reading comprehension passages and short stories as weekly homework. A mixed-methods approach has been utilized to gather the required data namely pre- and post-tests and a focus group interview. Moreover, descriptive and inferential statistics were used via utilizing Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyze the data gathered from the pre- and post-tests. In addition, the focus group interview results have been analyzed thematically. The results of the post-tests clearly show that by the end of the semester, the experimental group students outperformed their counterparts in the control group in writing descriptive paragraphs (p. value .000). Along this, the focus group interview results support the post-tests results’ findings and confirm the positive impact of handwriting integration on enhancing the Kurdish EFL students’ descriptive paragraph writing performance. Furthermore, the focus group interview results further indicate that handwriting integration enhanced the Kurdish EFL students’ autonomy and self-reliance in writing.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Almas Nasradeen Abdulrahman, Chalak Ali Mohammed Ameen, Khelan Mohammed Salih Mahmood
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