The Effect of Thinking Together Approach vs. Autonomous Learning Approach on Iranian EFL Learners Writing Ability

Writing, as an influential tool for a permanent record of one’s voice, has been at the locus of EFL learning and teaching for centuries. Considering the fact that individuals’ ability to write is of the utmost importance in today’s era of communication and social life, the current study was conducted in order to make a comparison between Autonomous Learning Approach and Thinking Together Approach, in order to find out which one is more efficient considering the writing skill of the language learners. At the first stage, in order to homogenize the participants based on their language proficiency Preliminary English Test (PET) was administered. According to the results of PET out of 77 participants 60 language learners were selected. As far as random selection of the participants was not feasible, the design was considered to be quasi-experimental with pretest and posttest. To achieve the research objectives, the participants separated into two groups. In the Thinking Together group, the participates were trained to work in a group, share their ideas with each other, use their reason and support their ideas, reach to an agreement, by other members, and write according to their talk in their groups, while in the Autonomous group the participants were supposed to express their ideas efficiently. Then, the post-test was administered and the results were compared and contrasted for further analyses. In this case, paired sample t-test results were checked. As the results indicated, the Thinking Together treatment had a greater effect on individuals’ writing performance than Autonomous Learning Approach. Thus, it can be considered as a suitable approach to be applied in language classes