Sentence Combining Plus (SC+): its effect on students' writing quality and strategy use

The purpose of the present study was to check, on the one hand, whether or not Sentence Combining Plus (SC+) can affect L2 learners' writing performance, and on the other hand, in what type of strategies are learners involved when doing SC+ exercises. Two homogenous groups of sophomore students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The study consisted of two parts. In the first part, the experimental group was exposed to SC+ exercises as treatment and the control group practiced SC (Sentence Combining) only. The results of t-tests revealed that the practice of SC+ caused a significant improvement on the students' writing performance. This improvement was, in particular, evident in the areas of content, organization, and language use. In the second part of the study, ten students--five from the experimental and five from the control group--were randomly selected and studied for the type of strategies they used through introspective interviews. Results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the introspective interviews showed that students who had practiced SC+ used more effective strategies. Moreover, they paid more attention to aspects of cohesion and evaluation than did the students from the control group. Based on the findings of the study, we can safely state that the practice of SC+ in intermediate writing courses will improve students' writing skill. An evidence for this, besides students' well performance on a posttest writing task, has been an enhancement of effective strategy use by them.