The Impact of Integrating Reading and Writing Skills on Palestine Technical College Students' Paragraph Writing and Attitudes towards Writing Skill

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the impact of integrating reading and writing skills on Palestine technical college students' paragraph writing and attitudes towards writing skill .The targeted skills were writing a coherent paragraph ,paragraph development ,unity, topic sentence ,coherence ,supporting sentences ,cohesion and concluding sentence . To achieve this aim, the researcher employed a representative sample of 80 EFL students studying at Palestine technical college. The sample was divided into two groups: an experimental group consisting of 40 students each group has 20 male students, and 20 female students, and the control group consists of 20 male, and 20 female students .The two groups were equivalent in their previous learning achievement in English writing in particular .Regarding the instruments, the researcher used two tools: pre/post Test to explore students' performance in writing a coherent paragraph, and paragraph skills ,and attitude scale to reveal students' attitudes towards writing .The test was used as a posttest to assess any possible differences between the target groups. The collected data were analyzed and treated statistically by using of SPSS .The findings of the study revealed that there were significant differences in participants' performance before and after integrating reading and writing skills in favor of post-performance. The findings also pointed toward the presence of significant differences between the attitudes of the experimental group in favor of after experiment .Moreover, the study's findings revealed that there were significant differences between the mean scores attained by experimental group and that by the control group in favor of the experimental group. There were significant differences between the mean scores of female students than male students in favor of female .Additionally, implementing the effect size equation and Eta square the study revealed that integrating reading and writing skills had a great effect size .The study recommended that teachers as well as lecturers are asked to integrate reading and writing activities in teaching writing skills in general and paragraph writing in particular, to develop and improve their paragraphs. Also, it suggested that further research should be conducted on the impacts of integrating reading and writing skills on different English skills and other college subjects.