The importance of outlining in developing good essays for foreign language writers

Abstract

Writing in second and foreign language contexts is a discovery of new things. Because it is to find out how to write strategically, instead of only translating preconceived ideas into text. That is to say writing for novice writers is based on developing strategies of writing, for implementing knowledge and transforming it to the readers. In all the models of writing being tackled in this research, Hayes and Flower (1980), Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), the discovery involved, was highly based on the problem-solving issue to show the difference between novice writers and expert writers, and to give examples of how they process knowledge in writing. Experts determine a set of goals for their texts, and organize the ideas using outlining and planning strategies. While novice writers write the ideas prompted in their minds spontaneously and translate them directly into a text. This study investigates the importance of outlining in developing and organizing good texts for student‟s writers enrolled in Mentouri University (Constantine). It represents a case study of 40 students chosen to represent the experimental group and the control group through the evaluation of their final papers presented at the end of the test. We attempted to know the importance of this strategy in writing and what impact it has on the students writing. Hence, we evaluated four basic writing criteria in our student‟s papers (The targeted audience, content and organization, rhetorical functions, and coherence and cohesion). There were no significant differences between the performance of the experimental group and the performance of the control group.