Learning to write: Effects of prewriting tasks on English writings of Vietnamese students

In learning to write in English, students from so-called interdependent cultures might face the clashes of the communication conventions of their mother tongue and of English as a Foreign Language. Prewriting tasks might overcome these difficulties in learning to write in English. The effects of two prewriting tasks, group discussion and free writing, on the length and the quality of English argumentative texts of Vietnamese university students were examined with a two-groups pretest-posttest design with switching replications. Repeated measures analyses of variance indicated both tasks had a positive effect on the productivity and the writing quality, with free writing showing a larger effect on productivity. Limitations as well as implications for learning English as a Foreign Language in interdependent cultures are discussed.