Developing Writing Skills through Discourse Competence in Learners of English as a Second Language

Abstract

Competence in a target language is, no doubt, the focus of any meaningful language study. The ability of the learners of a language to effectively and appropriately put together pieces of thoughts, ideas and opinions in a clear manner and unified whole is an indicative of literacy in education.  The development of this competence in the learners of English as a second language becomes imperative. This paper examines developing writing skills through discourse competence in students of Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology, Ikere-Ekiti, Nigera. One hundred students across the four colleges were purposively selected for the study. A pretest was conducted to ascertain the level of the students competence in writing skills . A total number of sixty students whose performance were very poor in the pretest were selected as experimental group for the study. Having exposed the students to different cohesive devices that enhance good writing skills in academic activities, a post-test was conducted to also ascertain the level of their improvement and achievement after four months academic activities. The outcome shows significant improvement in the performance of the experimental group. The empirical study, therefore, reveals that discourse competence enhances the mastery of good writing skills which the second learners of English needed in the target language to perform effectively and efficiently in any area of their study. It also emphasizes the significance of discourse competence in enhancing the students the knowledge to manipulate language in order to meet written communication goals as the needs for it arise.