- Introduction
Writing is a complicated process which involves a number of cognitive and metacognitive activities, for instance; brainstorming, planning, outlining, organizing, drafting, and revising Cushing Wiegle writes research that shows writers spent a lot of time planning and editing their work for both organization and content, as well as taking the audience into consideration (2002, pp.22-23). The act of writing creates an environment for the development of cognitive and organizational strategies whereby students link new concepts with familiar ones, synthesize knowledge, explore relations and implications, outline information, and strengthen conceptual frameworks (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, &Wilkinson, 2004; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). Writing is a powerful tool which embracing variety of skills. It has the ability to fill up some goals (Graham, 2006). People can use it to provide and convey information (Graham et al., 2012).
In spite of the importance of writing, most of the teachers’ attention is to the speaking skill and many of them give little or even no attention to the writing activities. Learning to write is difficult especially for those writing in a second or a foreign language since they do not know enough about how to generate ideas for writing (Mousapour Negari, 2011). According to Darayseh (2003), teaching writing is not simply means asking students to do grammar exercises in writing or getting writing which is free from grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes, instead, writing should support students interests and their enthusiasm to communicate with the reader, and shows how they reach to their final writing products. Some of the challenges faced by student EFL writers include their personal first language (L1) writing background and current English language proficiency, their knowledge of and motivation around the topic and their skills in planning, drafting and revising their own writing (Harmer, 2004; Hyland, 2002).
The Impact of Learners’ Awareness of Transition Words (TWs) on Writing Cause and Effect Essays among Pre-intermediate EFL Learners