Effects of the process-genre approach on expository essay writing skills, collaborative writing attitudes, and writing self-confidence among grade 9 students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the process genre approach on general secondary school students’ expository essay writing ability, collaborative writing attitude, and writing self-efficacy belief. The study population was Grade Nine students learning in 20 sections at Tana Haik General Secondary School in Bahir Dar City during the 2024 academic year. Of these, the study participants were two sections of Grade Nine students who were selected by simple random sampling. The quasi-experimental pretest-posttest comparison group design was employed for the research. The process genre approach was used in the experimental group (53 students) and the writing lesson activities presented in the curriculum were used in the control group (53 students) to teach for 12 sessions (for twelve weeks). Pre-test and post-test data were collected through expository essay writing ability test, collaborative writing attitude questionnaire, and writing self-efficacy belief questionnaire from the two groups. Pre-test and post-test data were analyzed by between subjects Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Pre-test analyses show that the experimental and control groups were equivalent in expository essay writing ability, collaborative writing attitude,  and writing self-efficacy belief  at the beginning of the experiment. The analyses of post-test data indicate that the experimental group outscored significantly the control group on expository essay writing ability (P < .001, partial ƞ² =.272), collaborative writing attitude (P < .001, partial ƞ² = .727), and writing self-efficacy belief (P < .001, partial ƞ² = .698). Therefore, the findings of the study show that learning to write in Amharic through a process genre approach has significant positive contributions to increase students' ability to write expository essays, collaborative writing attitude and writing self-efficacy.

Keywords: Process genre approach, collaborative writing attitude, writing self-efficacy belief