Developing students’ writing abilities through reading : the case study of 2nd year LMD students at Bejaia University

Abstract EN

Reading provides students with an opportunity of being exposed to well written pieces of writing which can help them improve their language abilities and writing schemata.

The present article investigates the effectiveness of teaching writing through reading to develop students’ writing abilities.

The participants are second year LMD students at the University of Bejaia.

To carry out the research, a quasi- experimental design is adopted to test the hypothesis that teaching reading and writing integratively enhances students writing competence compared to teaching the writing skill alone.

For this purpose, two groups displaying similar performance on the writing proficiency pre-test were randomly assigned into an experimental group and a control groups.

The experimental group (n=16) was taught reading and writing integratively while the control group (n=16) received no manipulation.

At the end of the program, both groups were administered a writing proficiency posttest.

Statistical analysis procedures were applied to the test scores of both groups.

The results of this study indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups’ at the level of the posttest.

Furthermore, the scores obtained from the pretest and posttest, concerning the experimental group, indicates that the students’ abilities in writing improved after implementing our reading/writing program