Teaching and assessing writing

Abstract

This study assesses English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students’ writing development when they were exposed to the synergized use of drama-based pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based teaching in an argumentative writing course. The study focused on qualitative analyses of students’ reflections, essays, interviews, as well as their drama performance collected in a Chinese university EFL argumentative writing course over one academic semester. The results show that although adjusting to the curriculum was a challenging process, the students gradually embraced the drama-based pedagogy, gained knowledge on writing topics through drama participation and post-drama exploration, and enriched the content of their writing. The students also demonstrated their increasing alignment with SFL-based linguistic guidance, exemplified by their improved regulation of writing content through using linguistic resources appropriate to the genre of argumentative writing. The study concludes that EFL student writers could have complex yet positive experiences with the synergized use of drama-based pedagogy and SFL-based teaching.