The Effect of Using Reflective Journals on the Writing Achievement and the Writing Attitudes of Eighth Grade EFL Jordanian Students

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the effect of using reflective journals on the writing achievement and writing attitudes of eighth grade EFL students in Jordan. The sample of the study consisted of two eighth grade student sections at the Educational Creativity Schools in Amman. One of the two sections was purposely assigned as the control group (18 students) and the second section was assigned as the experimental group (18 students). The research instruments used to achieve the purposes of this study were: A writing attitude questionnaire and a writing achievement test with the scoring scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as means and standard deviations, in addition to the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The main results of the study indicated that the mean scores of the experimental group was significantly higher than the mean scores of the control group in the writing achievement and writing attitudes after eight weeks of treatment. This means that the use of reflective journals had significantly greater positive effect on the eighth -grade EFL students’ writing achievement and writing attitudes than the effect of using the traditional methods.