Implications for the main study

Regarding the warm-up exercises for the verbal protocol, they presented no difficulty nor did the instructions for the written and verbal tasks. Moreover, as a result of the pilot, it was confirmed that the think-aloud protocol analysis would be used in the main study because it gives insights into the writing process which might not be available in any other way. This will be triangulated with other methods: interview, observation, and analysis of written products. Another technique– teachers‘

interview, is to be added in order to obtain their views on the students‘ writing in the different writing stages.

Another adjustment included a decision to conduct the students‘ interviews immediately after finishing the think-aloud session instead of before (cf. Victori, 1995: 209). Additionally, some more questions about writing strategies were added, some overlapping questions were amended, and other confusing or unclear questions were replaced by simpler ones.

One of the limitations identified from the pilot study was the disagreement of the female subjects to be video-taped due to religious, social and cultural principles.

Therefore, audio-recording was utilised instead, and consequently, it was accepted that this would be the strategy for the main study (see 3.11).

Another procedural problem encountered during the pilot study was that of the interference of conversations in the next room and a few interruptions caused by people entering the room where the study was carried out, since it was an office shared by the secretary of the English postgraduate department. Clearly, these distractions had an adverse effect upon the concentration of the subjects as they were engaged in writing. Consequently, arrangements were made to use a more convenient place for the main study.

75 3.10.2 The main study

The main study involved two groups of informants: students and lecturers.

3.10.2.1 Procedure

The researcher first met with the Head of the English Department to obtain official permission to conduct the study (i.e., an informed consent form to be signed) (see Appendix 1). The Head of Department demonstrated a willingness to help and explained that he would provide whatever support and facilities might be needed in order for the research to be successful. In addition, some lecturers were also seen with a view to asking them for help to directly contact their students and find volunteers. The search for participants was also undertaken by the researcher himself by visiting lecture halls and approaching students to invite them to participate in the study. Many students were keen to be involved, but some were hesitant or not interested at all. This was not unexpected, since students are not generally aware about research.

When the expected number (30) of students was available, the researcher met with them and gave them a general idea about the research aim, together with more specific information concerning the number of sessions the students would have to be available, and the amount of time that they would have to devote to the writing tasks and the interview. The researcher explained to the subjects that they would be required to sign a consent form (see Appendix 2) before they would be allowed to participate. The researcher arranged a second meeting and the subjects were assigned an argumentative essay in English of two hours in order to determine their writing proficiency (see 3.10.2.2.1).

After identifying the writing proficiency of writers, subjects were trained on how to think aloud – how to verbalise whatever comes to their mind while writing their essays in English. As the researcher believed that the selected subjects were ready for their next individual session, subjects were asked to write an essay in English which was the beginning of the data collection using the think-aloud technique, protocols being required from each subject.

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Each subject was tape-recorded as they were writing their essays. The tape recorder was switched on as soon as the subjects sat with their pens and papers ready to write.

At the same time, the researcher continued to observe the subjects from a near distance to capture their writing behaviour. No time limit was set for the writing task;

however, the maximum time spent in writing was 128.9 minutes.

As they finished, and after a short break, each subject discussed what he/she had written in his/her essay with the researcher. In this encounter, the subjects were asked questions related to their writing: how, why, and what.

Each subject and the researcher then listened to the subject‘s tape-recorded essay and the researcher asked questions about their writing and the tape recorded responses.

Questions the researcher asked were: how subjects used their notes, which parts of the essay were the easiest or most difficult and why, and why they chose a certain word instead of the other. Moreover, their notes, drafts, and the main copy of their essays were used in the analytical phase of the study.

The last session was for meeting subjects individually again for the interview which covered a range of points with regard to the subjects‘ writing experience, perceptions and feelings to help further illuminate the think-aloud protocols.

3.10.2.1.1 Subjects: Sampling and background 3.10.2.1.1.1 Selection of the subjects

The reason for choosing fourth year students is that working with first or second year students would have meant that they had had only a limited exposure to university English writing instructions, and the data obtained from their protocols and interviews may have said more about their secondary rather than their university learning, which is the context for the enquiry. The reason for not involving third year students was due to the difficulties experienced by the researcher during the pilot study to convince many of them to take part, as they explained that their weekly time table was full of many demanding subjects, a justification most of the fourth year students did not give. For all these reasons, the researcher decided to work with fourth year rather than first, second, and third year students. In addition, working with fourth year students meant that, in theory at least, subjects would be able to

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draw on all the teaching of writing they had received in their all previous years in the English department.

Initially, 30 students (nearly the whole cohort of fourth year students of English at MU) were selected, subject to willingness to participate in the present study. All the 30 students participated in the writing competence measurement. However, for various reasons (but many because of workload), some of the students came to the researcher‘s desk and asked to withdraw from the study. Hence, the number of students who agreed to take part in the study was 23. However, after scoring the students‘ writing competence test and collecting and transcribing the protocols, the present researcher found it necessary to discard 12 students. The first reason behind that was because some of those students obtained a total score between 51 and 64 in the writing competence test which means they were classed as average (i.e., neither good nor poor writers) by the researcher (see 3.10.2.2.1.4). The second reason was that some protocols taken from students did not confirm with validity requirements.

In those protocols, subjects were frequently silent despite the training they received on how to think aloud as well as the continuous instruction ―to keep verbalising and never remain silent‖. The period of silence continued throughout the task without producing any verbalisation accounting for these silent periods. In this respect, Green (1998) asserts that protocols that contain unaccounted-for periods of silence are likely to be incomplete because during periods of silence relevant thoughts might be activated in the writer‘s mind yet they are not being verbalised. For this reason, Green (1998) recommends that such protocols are to be discarded. Therefore, the researcher and after consulting his supervisors, decided to exclude those subjects from the investigation. Therefore, the number of students actually participating in the study was 11. They were aged between 21 and 22 years, and included both males and females.

The second group of informants were three members of staff (two hold PhD degrees and one holds an MA). All these informants were experienced in teaching English composition and were teaching either English writing or composition classes at the time of conducting the investigation.

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3.10.2.1.1.2 Subjects’‎ language‎ proficiency‎ level (the recent academic performance record)

The linguistic competence of the subjects was assessed in terms of the scores derived from the results the subjects obtained during the past three years of their study at the English department prior to conducting this research. The six language modules considered in order to determine the subjects‘ language proficiency were:

vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, reading, and writing as well as the aggregate score on them (see Appendix 17).

As also common in other fields of education, current subjects‘ language proficiency as full-time students of English varied according to the scores they received in these language skill courses which they were required to undertake. It was believed that the achievement those subjects attained in the above mentioned modules would determine their overall language proficiency level as students of English who had studied English for 10 years, seven out of which were as specialised English majors (i.e., four years at the secondary stage plus three years at university). Table 3-2 below illustrates the subjects‘ language proficiency level by showing the overall mean of the scores those subjects obtained in the modules mentioned above, and also the total percentage and their grades for these modules during the past three years prior to conducting the research. The students‘ classification into grades was based on English Department evaluation system in Libya. This means that those who obtained scores of zero to 49 are rated ‗poor‘; 50 to 64 rated as a ‗pass‘; 65 to 74 is

‗good‘; 75 to 84 is ‗very good‘ and 85 to 100 is rated as ‗excellent‘.

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* For information on writers‘ proficiency in L2 writing, see 3.10.2.2.1, and Table 3-3.

** For details of individual scores of these modules for each subject see Appendix 17.

According to the information shown in the table above, one can see that there is a correlation between language proficiency level and subjects‘ writing proficiency. All of the subjects who scored quite high grades in their language proficiency were also reported as good writers, and those who scored rather lower grades (e.g., Pass) (except S11) in their language proficiency were considered as poor writers.