The Effects of Story Mapping and Hortatory Exposition Techniques on Students' Compositions

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating the following: First, the effects of the story mapping and the hortatory exposition techniques on students' composition writing; second, EFL students' attitudes towards writing in English; and lastly, the correlation between such attitudes and students' writing achievements. The participants were 60 (33 male and 27 female) students from the 4th year of the Department of English, College of Arts, University of Anbar, Iraq, who were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The experiment was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2020-2021. A pretest, a posttest, a preattitudinal questionnaire, and a postattitudinal questionnaire were used to collect the data. The results revealed that the mean scores of the students in the experimental group were higher than that of the students in the control group, indicating a significant positive effect of the use of the story mapping and the hortatory exposition techniques in teaching writing. Additionally, the results of the postquestionnaire revealed that the students developed positive attitudes towards writing in English, which were negative before the implementation of the experiment. Finally, the results revealed a correlation between students' attitudes towards writing in English and their achievements such that as the attitudes improve, the achievements increase half as much.