Enhancing Students’ Writing Skill by Using Rubrics: An Experimental Research at a high school in Can Tho city

Abstract

Teaching EFL writing has been one of the most trending research fields recently. Among the techniques being tested, using instructional rubrics has drawn much attention from researchers and teachers. This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of using rubrics in enhancing students’ writing skill as well as explore students’ attitudes towards this technique. The research uses the experimental research design. The participants are thirty students (N=30) at a high school in Can Tho city. The main research tools include two guiding rubrics, one writing pre-test, two writing post-tests, and a questionnaire. The results analyzed by SPSS software reveal that there are positive changes regarding students’ writing skill after using both holistic and analytic rubrics. Furthermore, through the analysis of the data gathered from the questionnaire, positive perceptions towards the rubrics are also reported. From these findings, pedagogy suggestions are discussed to further the use of rubrics in teaching EFL.