Abstract

This study investigates the effects of brainstorming and role playing as pre-writing strategies on the content of students’ writing assignments. The work starts from the premise that pre-writing strategies are vital for the generation of ideas from which to write about and scaffold upon and they are fundamental to the development of competence writing skills. The investigation begins with the teaching and observations of a group of 33 students over four weeks. The study employs a single group pre-test-post-test design. Over the data collection period, seven essays were collected from each student. Pre-test and post tests marks were taken after each treatment for comparison and analysis. Only the content marks of these essays were taken into account to ascertain if the pre writing strategies affect the content of their essays. The marks from the post-tests and the content analysis showed that there were positive developmental changes in the content of the argumentative essay written. Students wrote more and their arguments were more convincing after the treatments as compared to the pre-test. Interviews were carried out with the subjects for comments and feedbacks on both the pre-writing strategies. All the students agree that the pre-writing strategies helped them in the generation of ideas and supporting points and examples, thus they wrote more. Interestingly, role playing has made an impact on the students’ perception of real issues convincing us that the potential of role playing has yet to be fathomed.