Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives of the Outcome of Reading Short Stories on the Development of Students’ Writing

Abstract

As a result of globalisation, the English language has become the medium of teaching and learning in several countries, including Saudi Arabia. Extensive research has explored methods of improving second language acquisition and developing learners’ language skills; however, there is a gap concerning instructors’ and learners’ views regarding effective ways to improve students’ writing skills. This dissertation examines how reading short stories can improve students’ writing in a Saudi college. Hereby, 76 students were taught to improve their writing by means of reading short stories. The study’s theoretical framework is a combination of Krashen’s input hypothesis (1988) and Swain’s output hypothesis (1985). The main assumption is that giving students sufficient opportunities to practice their input results in accurate output. The underpinning approach is a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem and to ensure valid and reliable findings (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). The qualitative methods are semi-structured interviews with four instructors and ten students, while the quantitative methods are a questionnaire and a student writing pre-test and a post-test. The collected data are analysed using SPSS software, mainly a t-test. The main finding is that both teachers and students view reading short stories as a positive method to improve writing. The significance of this study resides in its contribution by giving insights into effective teaching strategies to enhance students' writing skills.