Improving Functional Texts Writing Skills in English as a Foreign Language

AbstractThis research paper aimed at ways of improving students’ writing skills in English, with focus on writing functional texts. We applied a questionnaire to find out the students’ interests and used the results when preparing the actual writing tasks. The answers to the tasks were written online, through posts on Facebook.com. In order to evaluate the students’ performance, we used evaluation grids and progress charts, focusing on six different parameters for each student: cohesion, format, style, vocabulary, accuracy, and communication efficiency. In the end, we applied a questionnaire to help students to self-evaluate their own cognitive approaches. The results of the experiment confirmed that the usage of topics connected to the students’ own interests increases their ability to write functional texts. This fact seems to be mostly due to a motivation increase. It also seems that the experiment stimulated students’ metacognitive awareness: they became more confident in expressing own views and opinions, and in appreciating own progress more appropriately