Exploring the Impact of Journal Writing on Enhancing Kurdish EFL Students’ Argumentative Essay Writing Performance

Improving writing skills has always been a challenge for EFL students in different countries and contexts. To assist students in enhancing their writing skills properly, various techniques have been utilized by EFL teachers and educators, one of which is journal writing. The current study is a quasi-experimental investigation into the impact of journal writing on enhancing the argumentative writing skills of Kurdish EFL students. The participants of the study are 40 second-year Kurdish EFL students of the English department at Charmo University. They are divided into two groups, controlled and experimental. Two tools of data collection have been utilized to collect the data, namely pre-, post-tests and a questionnaire. The results of the tests have been analysed via SPSS (version 26). The test results reveal a significant difference between both groups’ progress in favour of the experimental group students (p-value 0.0000001). Additionally, the questionnaire results clearly demonstrate that the experimental group students had positive perspectives on the impact of journal writing on enhancing their overall essay writing performance, as well as their argumentative and counterargument writing performance in particular. In addition, the students believe that journal writing implementation enhanced their motivation and self-confidence to write efficiently.