Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice

Abstract

Throughout the course of time, the realm of teaching and learning has long been undergoing in the traditional fashion, wherein the teachers are monopolizing the lectures; while the students are bench-bound listeners. So, since we are living in a world that requires changes in all domains, especially in education, new ways of teaching and learning are then highly recommended. In writing classes, for instance, teachers are most often focusing on the final product rather than the different stages that the students should go through during the realization of their written assignments. Correspondingly, teachers are supposed to help their students to recognize that a well-crafted piece of writing is never complete. The present study, therefore, aimed to help the students to reflect, discuss their writing, and to write successive drafts until they reached the required written output. The paper aimed as well to measure the effect of these phases on developing the students’ writing abilities. To this end, a pre-experimental design was seen appropriate to reach that end, wherein a group of 32 students enrolled in the English section at Cheikh Larbi University (Tebessa/Algeria) were exposed to a treatment for nearly two months after being trained on how to work within the tenets of the four-phase process (drafting, reviewing, editing, and writing the final copy). For a more in-depth study, a focus group interview was conducted right after the intervention to serve the purpose of validating the quantitative data. Results revealed two major findings; (a) a noticeable improvement in the students’ writing abilities, and (b) the students’ eagerness toward the use of the four-phase process in writing classes.