The contribution of free reading to students’ writing proficiency in EFL
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Abstract
Many factors contribute to students’ writing proficiency. This paper intends to find out whether free reading is one of them. A group of Romanian students of English as a foreign language has been tested for their amount of free reading and writing proficiency. Students’ scores on the two tasks have been compared by calculating the Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient. The degree of covariance obtained is quite weak, showing no significant relationship between free reading and writing proficiency. However, the coefficients of all the variables observed are higher than zero, which can imply that reading is important in acquiring a (foreign) language. The paper concludes by suggesting possible ways for EFL teachers to stimulate students’ interest in free reading.
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Keywords: English as a foreign language; free reading; writing proficiency;Â
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