The rapid globalization has infused Taiwan education with new expectations of
students regarding English proficiency skills. For most EFL students, composing
English is a difficult task that requires extra efforts, linguistically and cognitively, to
formulate the contents. Some researchers believe a prompt can provide a context
where the writers can elicit more complex language and thus facilitate writing. A
study was conducted to explore the effects of prompts on college EFL learners’
writing performance and their perception of the help of a prompt. College students of
an EFL course were invited to participate in this study and compose two writing
pieces each—one with a simple title and the other with a prompt of five sentences. All
the participants used the same title and prompt, and after writing both pieces, each
participant was asked to complete a short questionnaire on their thoughts about the
use of prompt. The results showed that the prompt did not have a significant effect on
the writing performance of the participants as a whole. However, the majority of the
participants preferred having a prompt when writing, even for the writers worse with a
prompt. This study showed that a prompt did not help the writing performance in EFL
learners and that although most EFL learners did not believe a prompt would help, the
majority of EFL learners preferred having a prompt when writing. The reasons for this
discrepancy need to be explored further with a larger study population.
A study was conducted to explore the effects of prompts on college EFL learners’
writing performance and their perception of the help of a prompt. The results showed
that the prompt did not have a significant effect on the writing performance of the
participants as a whole. However, the majority of the participants preferred having a
prompt when writing, even for the writers worse with a prompt.