This study attempted to investigate how the instruction of organizing strategies in the pre-writing phase, namely, brainstorming, clustering (grouping ideas), outlining, and text analyzing, affects the writing performances of beginning EFL writers in a senior high school. It addresses the following questions: (1) Will the beginning EFL senior high school student writers make a significant improvement in their organizational abilities after they receive instruction in organizing strategies in the pre-writing phase? (2) Will the beginning EFL senior high school student writers’ overall writing abilities be significantly enhanced after they receive instruction in organizing strategies in the pre-writing phase?
The overall plan of this study was to compare the writing proficiency and organizational abilities of 80 intermediate-level EFL student writers at Hsin-chung Senior High School. The project began in September, 2001 and ended in January, 2002, and the Pre-test-Post-test Control Group Design was employed in this study. The experimental group received the instruction in organizational exercises and the control group received the instruction in grammatical exercises. Results of the study favor the experimental group. After four months’ instruction of organizing strategies in the pre-writing phase, students in the experimental group experienced significant growth (p=.05) in all components except mechanics; while students in the control group, though making some improvement in the components of organization, grammar, and vocabulary, showed no significant increase (p=.05) in all of the five components. The comparison of mean pre-post scores on the five factors indicated that the experimental group made significant more improvement than the control group in content and organization (p=.05).
The above results supported the first hypothesis but rejected the second one. Therefore, it is suggested that the curriculum incorporating organizational practices was superior in that students who followed it made significant progresses in content and organization. As shown in the JCEE Rating Scale, content and organization together constitute half of the total scores. The weight these two components carry suggest that they play a major role in a piece of writing, and there is no doubt that they should be emphasized for all levels of EFL student writers.

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