On the Impact of Literature Reading on Iranian Upper-intermediate Male and Female EFL Learners’ Creative Writing Ability

Abstract

Since learners’ motivation and engagement have a considerable impact on learning a foreign language, the importance of humanizing the materials in today’s world of materials development is gaining much more attention. This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of literature reading as one of the most important elements of humanizing the materials on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ creative writing ability. In so doing, 60 learners studying at Zehtaban English Institute in Rasht, with the age range of 19 to 23, were selected from among 160 participants based on their performance on a sample copy of QPT. The study employed a true-experimental design in which the participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. First, a pretest of creative writing was administered. Then, the experimental groups received an eight-session treatment that was the instruction through literature reading. Meanwhile, the control groups received an eight-session placebo. A posttest of creative writing was then administered to all the participants. The use of two-way ANOVA revealed that the experimental groups with the treatment of instruction through literature reading outperformed the control groups in creative writing test scores. Based on the findings of the present study, all stakeholders, particularly materials developers and teachers are proposed to include literary texts in language teaching and learning materials so that remarkable opportunity for improving creative writing ability among learners would be provided.