Abstract

The research explored the effects of integrating literary texts on the writing performance of selected university students. It also documented the attitudes of the university students on the integration of literary texts in their regular writing course and their perceptions on the difficulties they encounter in the writing process. These research objectives were rationalized by the need to address the writing difficulties by applying theoretical assumptions and addressing the empirical gaps of previous studies on the effectiveness of literature as a rich resource in developing language competence. The research participants were composed of first year business students who were enrolled in an ESP course in one of the universities in Bahrain. Each group was composed of 35 students with an equal distribution of male and female participants. A mixed method approach was used to address the core research questions with the primary application of an experimental design. The results revealed that literary text integration is effective in improving the academic writing performance of the university student-participants as indicated by the statistical test, wherein the experimental group (m = 3.35) had a higher level of improvement than the control group (m = 2.93) in terms of their overall writing performance after the intervention. The student-respondents had a positive attitude towards the integration of literary text in their regular writing course. Writing difficulties included the process of writing the introduction, body, conclusions of their academic writing tasks, use of relevant vocabulary communicative achievement, organization, and language use. It was recommended that language teachers should incorporate literary texts that are related to the writing lessons. Educational administrators and leaders may revisit the curriculum and use the empirical results in developing a more relevant language curriculum especially in the area of writing instruction where literary texts could be integrated.

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