Why Write More When You Can Write Less? EFL Students’ Insights on Prewriting

Many students seem to believe that writing the first draft should be considered the final product, thus disregarding the different stages of the writing process, such as prewriting, drafting and revising. The present study investigates students’ perceptions of prewriting. Seventy-one students attending an English writing course participated in this study. A two-pronged quantitative and qualitative data collection method consisted of an online questionnaire and a semi-structured face-to-face interview to consider two research issues, namely: if and why students tend to resist prewriting techniques as well as their most and least preferred prewriting activity in the EFL classroom. The findings demonstrate that students have conflicting perceptions towards the concept of prewriting. Although possibly helpful, they perceive prewriting as a separate part of the writing process that could certainly be skipped unless carried out with the teacher’s assistance or assigned extra grades.