Improving l2 writing performance of international baccalaureate learners: Focus on rhetorical organization

The aim of this quasi-experimental research is to investigate the extent of improving Rhetorical Organization skills in Second Language (L2) English writing of secondary students through formal instructions in a specific Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) context. The classroom setting was at an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School in Istanbul. The participants were IB Diploma Program learners taking Business Management (BM) courses. It is aimed to first identify the needs of participants in dealing with writing short essay exam answers to the IB BM exams. Inspired by Trimble's Rhetorical Process approach, it is assumed that an intervention aiming to teach text organization via applications of rhetorical elements explicitly would improve the achievement of CLIL learners. Therefore, an explicit writing intervention program was designed and implemented. A selection of business content case samples provided by IB Organization (IBO) was integrated into classroom tasks. Two final-exam like tests for the BM subject of the IB Diploma Program were administered before and after the intervention program. The IBO BM Mark bands and Mark schemes, the public version of IELTS Writing Task 2, writing band descriptors, and a tailor made rhetorical functions assessment rubric were used as instruments of data collection. To increase the inter rater reliability, along with the researcher, another IB BM content teacher of the same IB World School and two L2 English teachers participated in the rating process. A questionnaire to evaluate the participants' perception of writing to the test before and after interventions was used. The quantitative data analyses included descriptive statistics. Participant's attitude on writing to the test was investigated through structured interviews before and after the intervention program. The qualitative data was analyzed through Open coding-Axial Coding-Selective Coding procedure to find out themes and to generate a grounding theory. NVivo 11 software program was used during the coding process. The findings revealed significant improvement on the L2 writing performances and attitudes of IB learners. The results indicated that the participants performed better and felt better after the intervention program. KEY WORDS: CLIL, IBO, rhetorical organization, improving L2 English writing