a comparative study on the effect of process writing and dictogloss on young iranian efl learners' writing skills and anxiety

Although many investigations have been carried out into the impact of different techniques and approaches to teach writing, there is still a lack of comparative study between the two different techniques (process writing and dictogloss). it is believed that a comparative study between them can be helpful for teachers to choose a more appropriate procedure to teach writing. hence this paper aims to compare the effect of process writing and dictogloss on young iranian efl learners' writing skills (content, organisation, and language) and anxiety. to achieve the aims of this study, 33 young iranian efl students with elementary level of language proficiency were selected by using convenience sampling, and a longman placement test was utilised to homogenise participants. they were randomly divided into two groups, and a pre-test was administered to examine their writing skills. one group was assigned to dictogloss writing tasks and the other one to process writing as a treatment for a period of five weeks with ten sessions. a writing task was administered as a post-test for both groups at the end of the treatment to see if the treatment was effective or not. to analyse the data, paired samples t-tests were used to show the effect of treatments on participants in each group, and an independent samples t-test was used to compare the mean score of both groups. moreover, a second language writing anxiety inventory developed by cheng (2004) was used to compare the amount of anxiety that participants felt in each group. the results of the study indicated that participants in the process writing group outperformed those in the dictogloss group as far as writing skills are concerned. furthermore, the study's findings showed no significant difference between groups in terms of writing anxiety. the results of the study have implications for learners and teachers in the area of tefl.