Content, Form and Function Outlines Strategy for Improving EFL Students' Writing Skills in Iraqi Schools

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of this strategy on the improving performance of ‎EFL language fourth preparatory school learners who face difficulty in writing ‎meaningful compositional writing. It aimed to examine whether the instruction based on ‎the strategy was more effective than the conventional method in developing learners’ ‎writing performance, A quasi-experimental design involving two groups, an experimental ‎group which was taught using the mentioned strategy and a control group following ‎traditional way in teaching, the sample of the research involved 60 fourth preparatory ‎school learners selected from EFL classrooms. Their achievement in writing skill was ‎measured by administrating two tests, a pre-test and post-test to both groups before and ‎after the experiment. The obtained data were statistically analyzed t-test independent ‎samples. The results revealed that the calculated value of experimental group in the post ‎test was 24.527. To determine whether there were statistically significant differences. The ‎improvement was evident in learners' ability to generate and organize ideas, use accurate ‎grammatical structures and employed appropriate communicative language functions in ‎their writing compositions. Findings suggest that integrating content development, ‎linguistic form, and communicative function in teaching writing can enhance learners’ ‎performance by shifting from route memorization to meaningful compositional writing, it ‎is also highlighted the important role of structured outlines in helping learners produce ‎coherent, organized, and meaningful written texts. The study therefore incorporating the ‎CFFOs strategy to EFL writing instruction and provides teachers with training programs ‎to support its effective implementation. The study also presents several suggestions for ‎further research in the field of Iraqi EFL writing instructions.