The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of graphic organizers on students’ writing ability as well as their attitudes towards this essential language skill. The sample of this study was composed of 24 Saudi male subjects registered in the preparatory program at Umm Alqura University during the academic year 2012- 2013. This study (a within subject design) was conducted in three phases and lasted for six weeks. Two main sources were used to generate data for the study: (1) samples of students’ writing before and after the graphic organizers intervention (2) a writing attitude survey which was administered twice before and after intervention. The writing scores of the participants before and after the graphic organizers’ intervention were compared and analyzed quantitative using the test of significance to see if there were any differences between means of the scores. The data generated through the writing attitude survey was analyzed qualitatively to detect any changes in students’ attitudes. The results of this study proved that the graphic organizers model had significantly improved the students’ writing ability and had positively impacted their attitudes towards this skill. These results suggest that graphic organizers can be an effective support in teaching writing of learners of English as a foreign language.
Keywords: : Writing ability, attitudes towards writing, cause/effect organizers, compare/contrast organizers, graphic organizers
