The role of writing in enhancing students’ intellectual abilities

Abstract

Improving students’intellectual abilities has been considered as one of the main purposes in higher education. The present research is an attempt to identify the possibilities of promoting mental abilities through the writing skill, as it demonstrates the way students’ creativity and ability of developing critical thinking could be reflected inwriting. It has been considered that writing is a keyelement to promote mental skills, due to the need of the writer to analyze , evaluate and construct a coherent and cohesive text in order to convince the reader . This study explores how promoting intellectual abilities are important for allowing the studentto bridge the gap between what they have learned in the classroom with the world outside. It investigates the case of Master two students from two different specialties ; Didactics of foreign languages and Didactics applied linguistics , and different teachers’ stand points at Abdel Hamid Ibn Badis University of Mostaganem regarding the core of this research. Both students and teachers participated in answering questionnaires in order to collect the data needed to explore the validity of hypotheses. The work is divided into three chapters; the first chapter covers an overview of the research and related work; the second revolves around the adopted methodology of research and dataanalysis; and the last one deals with the findings;suggestions; and recommendations based on the data collected and analyzed. The findings demonstrate that learners’ intellectual abilities can be promoted through persuasive writing. The research concludes that there are possibilities of enhancing intellectual abilities in EFL classrooms through writing workshop.