الفهرس 
Problem of the StudyOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This study was designed to investigate the effect of a suggested program based on blending two strategies (graphic organizers and think-aloud protocols) on developing second year secondary stage students’ EFL writing skills in the areas of content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, style, and mechanics. Two instruments were constructed: a writing skills checklist to determine writing skills necessary for second year secondary school students and a pre-post test to measure writing skills. The participants of this study were 60 second year secondary school students, in the age range of 17-18, studying at Mencha’t Abbas Secondary School for Girls located in Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt. This study adopted a quasi-experimental design. Two classes participated in this study. Class A was chosen as the experimental group (N=30) and class B served as the control group (N=30). At the beginning of the experiment, the writing skills test was administered to the experimental group and the control group. The independent-samples t-test revealed that there is no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups. This means that both groups were equivalent before carrying out the experiment. Next, the experimental group received the suggested program that blended two strategies (graphic organizers and think-aloud protocols); whereas, the control group received regular classroom instruction. The treatment lasted for 9 weeks, with two sessions per week. Each session took about 100 minutes. At the end of the experiment, the same writing skills test was administered again to both groups. Results revealed that the mean score of the experimental group was higher than the mean score of the control group (M1> M2). This means that the suggested program has a positive effect on the EFL writing skills of the experimental group. Then, the effect size index (r) was used to determine how big the effect of the suggested program was, whether it was small, medium, or large. Results showed that the effect size of the program on the whole writing ability of the experimental group was 0.97. This means that the suggested program was highly effective in developing the EFL writing skills of the secondary stage students. Therefore, EFL teachers, curriculum planners and textbook designers were advised to integrate graphic organizers and think-aloud protocols into the EFL writing lessons.