Development of English Major Students’ Narrative Writing Skills on Greek’s Heroic Mythology through Reflective Writing Technique

Abstract

This study aimed to 1) investigate the effects of using reflective writing techniques on the development of narrative writing skills of Greek heroic mythology among English major students, and 2) analyze writing errors as well as changes in sentence structure, vocabulary use, and sequencing of events in students’ narrative writing of Greek heroic mythology. This research employed a quasi-experimental and mixed-methods design. The population consisted of 74 second-year English major students enrolled in the course Greek Mythology. The sample was selected using cluster random sampling and divided into an experimental group (48 students) and a control group (26 students). The research instruments included pre- and post-writing tests, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. Quantitative data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel to calculate mean, standard deviation, and t-test values, while AntConc was used for corpus-based analysis.

            The findings revealed that the experimental group showed significantly higher post-test narrative writing scores compared to their pre-test scores at the 0.05 level of significance. However, no statistically significant difference was found between the experimental and control groups in the post-test. Nevertheless, the experimental group demonstrated a greater tendency for improvement in score gains.
In addition, the results indicated that students produced longer pieces of writing, used more varied and specific vocabulary, and demonstrated increased use of compound and complex sentence structures. Meanwhile, grammatical and spelling errors showed a decreasing trend, although errors in capitalization and punctuation were still observed. In conclusion, the use of reflective writing techniques effectively enhanced the narrative writing skills of English major students in recounting Greek mythological heroes.