The Use of rubric to develop essay-writing skills of EFL learners

VI ABSTRACT THE USE OF RUBRIC TO DEVELOP ESSAY-WRITING SKILLS OF EFL LEARNERS Ayşe KIZILDA? Master Thesis, English Language Teaching Department Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Sema TUNCEL June 2002, 92 pages The aim of the present study is to help the students of ELT Departments to improve their essay-writing skills. For this purpose, one group of ELT freshmen was formed to utilize rubric as an instructional tool to guide them during the essay writing process. They had taken one pre-test, one post-test, and one follow-up test. Between pre-test and post-test, the students had completed four essay tasks on different writing structures (descriptive essay, narrative essay, cause & effect essay, and argumentative essay). The data derived from these tasks and tests were compared and/or contrasted whether there had been any change. Moreover, during the essay task, the learners were conferenced and given a questionnaire in order to get qualitative data. The results have positive tendency showing that the group of students in this study benefited using rubric to develop their essay-writing skills. In Chapterl, after giving a brief background to the study and presenting the problems related to essay-writing in general, the aim and scope of the study are clarified. Then, research question and hypotheses are stated.vu In Chapter 2, we have divided the literature review into two. The first part works with the background of teaching writing since 1800s and the theory of the present study. Consequently, the second part explains the studies conducted previously in the scope of this thesis. In Chapter 3, the methodological information such as subjects, the study design, and instrumentation is explained in detail. The data analysis and results are given in Chapter 4. Finally, the summary of the study, the general conclusions that can be interpreted from study results and suggestions for other researchers are argued in Chapter 5. In the conclusion part the implications of this study for ELT context is explained. Key Words: Rubric, essay-writing, instructional tool.