Exploring the Effect of Input Contextualization and Multisensory Teaching on Narrative Writing Development of EFL Learners with Diverse Learning Styles

^[1] Nafiseh Moosavi

^[2] Behdokht Mall-Amiri*

^[3]Hamid Marashi

Research Paper                                           IJEAP-2405-2053

Received: 2024-05-01                          Accepted: 2024-06-20                      Published: 2024-06-27

Abstract: As a tool of the mind, writing is the skill with which one converts their mind into words. Considering EFL learners' learning styles can be a crucial factor in letting them have a better-organized mind and assisting them to improve their writing ability. This study was an endeavor to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of input contextualization utilizing a multisensory teaching technique on the narrative writing ability of EFL beginner learners with visual, auditory, and tactile learning styles. To achieve this purpose, the researchers carried out a quasi-experimental study on 74 learners at the 8^th -grade secondary school in Tehran, Iran. Based on Cohen et al.'s (2002) questionnaire, their learning styles were detected as visual, auditory, and tactile. The three groups were provided with instructions utilizing contextualization of the input geared to their particular learning styles. To investigate the effectiveness of the intervention and estimate the students' writing improvement, the researchers employed a between-within-subjects comparison design utilizing the pretest-posttest writing (Flyer writing section) to check students' writing improvement and compare the improvement across the groups. With the violation of conditions for a mixed between-within-subjects ANOVA, paired-samples t-tests and a Kruskal Wallis test were conducted. The obtained results showed a significant improvement in the writing of the three groups of learners. It was also revealed that the three groups were not significantly different in their narrative writing performance after the intervention.

Keywords: Input Contextualization, Learning Styles, Multisensory Teaching, Narrative Writing

Introduction

The widespread need for communication necessitates improving oral and written communication skills. Since writing consists of a process in mind, it can reveal individuals' thoughts, imagination, and perception of the world. In addition, writing is an arduous skill that requires structural accuracy and communicative ability. Accordingly, writing as a language-engaging and mind-involving activity facilitates transferring thoughts into words and uncovers one's view towards the world they belong (Dar & Khan, 2015; Mahboob & Talaat, 2008).

Moreover, writing helps students express their feelings, ideas, and experiences (Sari et al., 2013). Sinurat (2015, p. 172) stated that writing is the act of recording ideas, thoughts, feelings, experiences, events and dates, for example writing letters, notes, shopping lists, etc. Considering crucial factors of vocabulary choice and linking the sentences along with compiling concepts and opinions in a narrative writing (Fatah, 2018) students should spend more time thinking about what they want to write (Harmer, 2007).

Hartono (2005) mentions that narrative is one genre of writing that aims to entertain the reader. Correspondingly, narrative writing, as one of the main genres of writing, assists writers to include their understanding of an event in an orderly format so that others can follow the existing rationale of the event's times. Hazel (2007, p. 7) stated that "a narrative is re-presentation of reality from a particular perspective: reality reconfigured to express meaning."

There are two approaches to teaching writing, namely product and process. Eschholz (1980) pointed out that product approach inspires the students to utilize a similar plan in various settings, applying the same forms, irrespective of the content. Moreover, this approach makes students aware of diverse writing aspects including vocabulary, organization, structure, and style. As for the process approach, Matsuda (2003, p. 21) believed that this approach to writing emphasizes "the view of writing as a process of developing organization as well as meaning."

A loving learning environment is a desirable learning context where learners comfortably receive input. To create such an atmosphere, contextualizing the input may be practiced which helps learners to have better and deeper comprehension of the instructed data. This is because their minds require to pick up the knowledge in a meaningful and purposeful language teaching milieu to connect teacher implementation to students' comprehension (Puchta, 2010). Besides, real life experiences can be presented through a variety of techniques with which students will be able to comprehend the instructions deeply.

Prevalent use of learning styles in teaching and learning process has added more practical and inspirational interests among teachers and learners. They both take advantage of the feasibility of the materials they are exposed to. Alwaqassi (2017) proposed that in order to create equal learning opportunities for all learners, teachers should incorporate learning styles in their teaching. Similarly, Kozhenvnikov et al. (2014) stated that the ultimate goal of learning styles is that learners vary according to their abilities and preferences. The more teachers match and involve these preferences in their instructions and learning environment, the greater improvement would be achieved for the students. Among various learning styles, visual, auditory, and tactile styles are commonly used to construct a teaching/learning context through which implemented data becomes more intelligible for students. Brown (2000, p. 113) believed that learning styles represent the "consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within an individual". The beneficial involvement of learning styles within language teaching and learning has been emphasized by many scholars as the contributor of both teachers and learners (Kinsella, 1993; Hussain, 2017; Mackeracher, 2004; Rozi et al., 2020).

The current investigation utilized Jubran's (2012) observation as the theoretical framework, presenting multisensory teaching as "any learning activity that combines two or more sensory strategies to take in or express information" (p. 52). According to him, multisensory techniques can increase the development of foreign language learning in a way that language learners receive data in accordance with their preferred styles with the help of different activities. The term multisensory teaching and learning has a long history among many researchers in pedagogy. It is believed that it can activate all the sensory channels of the learners and create a more tangible learning environment. Jubran (2012, p. 52) defined multisensory activity as "any learning activity that combines two or more sensory strategies to take in or express information." Multisensory activities can be as follows: a) visual representation of the input including images, picture stories and the like for visual learners; b) songs, audio tracks and recordings for the auditory; and c) handmade activities, sorting the picture stories, making post cards for the tactile learners (Jubran, 2012; Pritchard, 2009; Oxford 1989).

However, despite the recent pedagogical move towards more communicative approach in English teaching and learning in Iran, it seems that there is still the need of focusing on and emphasizing writing as one of the production skills of the students. To state differently, the curricula, in practice, seem to be incapable of presenting a technique that can foster the students' writing skill. This means that although course books provide students with some written practices, it seems that this productive skill needs to be emphasized more. Moreover, since writing requires thinking about different aspects of the topic, implementing a technique of teaching with which thinking process of students becomes more incorporated and accentuated seems to be vital. In addition, following (Brown & Lee, 2015; Langan, 2012; Mehar, 2019), giving learners the chance to look at a topic from their own perspective enables them to think out of the box and activate their imagination to consider an issue from different angles. This obviously promotes their imagination in addition to creating diverse creative texts that are raised from each and every student based on their own perception and not framed by a singular pattern designed by the teacher. The mentioned issues may necessitate creating a context in which topics of the course book are implemented with diverse activities incorporating sensory styles of the learners, mainly visual, auditory, and tactile, in addition to contextualizing the input so that all the students can deeply perceive the data.

According to Berns and Erikson (2001), contextualized teaching and learning assists learners to create a link between their real life and the content they are learning. Contextualizing the input requires the teacher's creation of a comprehensible environment in which all the data are being presented in a meaningful instruction. In other words, the teacher attempts to make a context in which the topics, such as daily routines, become tangible for the learners by connecting the students own experience with the new information through the use of relevant context. As for daily routines, for instance, the instructor can use posters on the wall, take advantage of the topic-relevant clips, or utilize matching items.

In writing practices at the secondary schools in Iran, the main focus is on descriptive and narrative writing. Since narrative writing necessitates understanding the logical order of the events, students usually find it effortful, and confront more problems producing this genre of writing. Therefore, a technique of teaching by which writing skill is accompanied with learners' preferred styles of receiving input and producing output seems to be beneficial.

To that goal, the researchers proposed a technique through which the requirements of the context were included. Input Contextualization Multisensory Teaching (ICMT technique hereafter) presented the students' needs of a loving learning environment where instructions were implemented in a meaningful and comprehensible context in addition to the involvement of the most preferred learners' learning styles. Moreover, all the required activities were in accordance with their preferred styles so that deeper understanding of the input facilitated the process of learning. Subsequently, to upsurge the learners' willingness to write, mainly narration as the goal of the present research, the technique assisted them to have deeper and higher understanding of how to convert their thoughts into words alongside the rational occurrences of the events, which seems to have received less attention by EFL teachers. This investigation bears significance as the technique helps EFL teachers to adapt and upgrade their instructions following their students' preferred learning styles with which course book topics become tangible for the students. Last but not least, decision makers can involve more contextualized topics and activities by which a deeper understanding of the teaching and learning process will occur.

To achieve the goals of the study, the researchers addressed the following research questions:

Research Question One: Does ICMT have any significant impact on the narrative writing ability of EFL learners with visual learning style?

Research Question Two: Does ICMT significantly affect the narrative writing ability of EFL learners with auditory learning style?

Research Question Three: Does ICMT significantly affect the narrative writing ability of EFL learners with tactile learning style?

Research Question Four: Does ICMT have any significantly differential effect on the writing ability of EFL learners with different learning styles?

Review of Literature

Writing

Communication is one of the most important tools of mind with which people try to link to each other's thoughts, inner sights, and intentions. Chakraverty and Gautum (2000) proposed that writing contains cognition since it requires spending a lot of time of thinking about a topic. Moreover, the writers have to analyze their background knowledge to transfer their thoughts into an appropriate discourse, which is a difficult process for them. Writing, as a means of communication, has the capacity to assist creating such a link and convert thoughts into words. The necessity of providing learners with suitable knowledge to exchange their ideas, express feelings, view world from different perspectives, and reveal their understanding of their world, makes writing a skill whose mastery is not easily achievable. Writers confront various problems while following the steps of writing process in their minds, from understanding the topic, finding suitable and appropriate words to creating illegible and relevant sentences.

According to Nunan (1989, p. 35), "Learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is a first, second or foreign language." Brown and Lee (2015) stated that writing involves thinking, drafting, and revising procedures. That is why writers find it hard since they have to think about what they are required to write and then organize their ideas in a pertinent way.

Learners generally struggle with diverse aspects that exist in the writing process such as "understanding the nature of academic writing conventions such as synthesizing ideas from various writing sources, using their own voices in writing, writing coherently" (Mehar, 2019, p. 972).

Langan (2012, p. 17) believed that a writer should consider goals within his/her writing including "unity, support, organization, and error free sentences". He further argued that cognitive skills such as gathering ideas in accordance to the topic, following a logical order among the text, considering sequence structures in paragraphs, expressing one's opinion within a draft, editing, and ultimately the final written output are sections that seem problematic steps for the students almost at all levels. Sequentially, all the mentioned items make writing a hard task for students, mainly beginner learners of English, since they have to go through all the steps with a language, they are not master at.

Narration as one of the genres of writing gets learners to narrate their perceptions in an orderly format that one or more events follow chronological order. Oshima (2007) defined narrative writing as a kind of story writing that the writers narrate the events in an order as they happened as well as utilizing time in order to organize their sentences. Sinurat (2015, p. 173) also stated that "narrative is a type of writing which tells about an event or process chronologically in certain time. Narrative is a writing that tells a story, whether true or fictional".

Process and Product Approaches

The product approach is an oriented-class due to the teachers supply students with standardized texts so that they can follow the model to write their own piece of writing” (Khan & Bontha, 2015, p. 96). Checa et al. (2017, p. 4) held that product approach "focuses on imitating and modeling a text as well as structuring phrases and sentences to complete a specific format of writing based on a provided sample. The organization of the ideas is more important than the ideas themselves and students only complete a single draft". Recent attempts toward developing writing have required learners' efforts to read and study as many texts and books as they can, mainly to enable themselves to analyze literary works and sequentially gain the ability to write in different genres. According to Al Bloushi and Al Shuraiaan (2024), a major advantage of product approach is that it presents certainty in learners since they are guided through their passages. Another critical advantage is that learners make less syntactic mistakes in writing. It may be a great centered composing practice where students center on particular linguistic rules all through the paper. Students focus on what the instructor needs them to memorize and recognize. The disadvantage of product approach is that learners lose their imagination; they have no say within the given passage. A few words can be repetitive and their writing may be unrealistic. Learners with this approach will not write for a reason; they will write to practice their language structure. The product approach shows the students that there's only one way to compose a section which is the model-based approach, having a model before them and copying it to develop another section.

However, the idea of achieving just the final goal has been replaced with the opinion of considering writing as a process through which writers need to follow some steps to obtain their goals. According to Zakime (2018),

Process writing is an approach to teaching writing that allows the teacher and the students to undergo the process of producing a text together. In process writing, students have the chance to think about what they are going to write, produce drafts, revise, edit, and give and receive feedback on their work before coming up with the final version of the text. A process approach to writing contrasts with a product approach, where the main idea is to reproduce a model text. (p. 1)

According to Tran (2016), process approach of writing can effectively develop students’ writing ability in a sense that they understand both the purpose of their writing and the ideas that are being developed. Badger and White (2000) illustrated the phases writers go through in their writing as follows: to begin, they should brainstorm the topic in their prewriting; then, they draft their brainstorming, including words and structures, as their first draft. Next, they revise it and finally edit or proof-read the text. Meanwhile, teachers act as facilitators, and not interferer, in each phase by instructing their students. This approach assists learners' improvement as they use their background knowledge, life experiences, and fantasy about the events they might even have not experienced. Nevertheless, this approach minimizes the imitation that exists in product-oriented class in which teacher provides the form of texts.

However, it is argued that through process-oriented approach learners of the same context have the same skills and creative potentials. Al Bloushi and Al Shuraiaan (2024, p. 17) stated that "the process approach allows students to write multiple drafts, revise, plan throughout the writing process, and make the text more reader-friendly. Teachers must help their students to write while writing not just provide them feedback afterwards". Kara and Abdulrahman (2022, p. 47) proposed “Process approach requires learners to brainstorm, collaborate, write multiple drafts, edit several times, get peer feedback or teacher-feedback and finalize the work at the end.”

Input Contextualization

Contextualization connects what learners understand and perceive from their own life to new concepts they are attaching to. That is how Vygotsky (1962) elaborated about considering context as a vital medium for better understanding of the learners. He claimed that those students who can match their prior experiences to their existing knowledge in an appropriate context would learn better. He believed that it helps learners to connect their previous knowledge with new concepts. In addition, contextualizing assists them to practice the new concepts, as well as integrating learned items, to their real-life scenario. It is what teachers perform in their teaching plans and enhance their learners' attention more. In other words, it is highly dependent on teacher's knowledge and understanding of the learners' real-life experiences. Additionally, learning environment can influence the appropriateness of the knowledge into the mind of the learners. Bronkhorst and Akkerman (2016) recognized three causes for the importance of utilizing input contextualization as follow: a) the specific and unique background which each learner processes; b) the personal adoption of their learning; c) unpredictable nature of what each learner is going to be attached to and be fitted into.

Bauer (2014) stated that the development of seeing the importance of contextualization in teaching methods and approaches (i.e., TBL, CLT) was a consequence of new research in the field of language acquisition. He asserted that with the advent of cognitivist views, contextualization got increasingly influential on learning a second language.        

Consequently and pedagogically, following the mentioned opinions about contextualizing the concepts, involving context-based instruction not only facilitates the knowledge transfer but also it actively involves  the learners and helps them in several ways:  a) being in a more authentic practice of daily life activity; b) providing them with more cognitive reasoning to explain the logical happening of a life event that occurs around them; and c) creating a better connection between the issues they have already known and experienced in their life with the new information they receive (Bauer, 2014; Curtis & Lawson, 2001; Schwarz et al., 2020) .

Curtis and Lawson (2001) pointed out that contextual learning and teaching refers to a concept that assists both instructors and learners to create link between subjects and real-life conditions. Thus, it motivates learners to foster their learning and attach their knowledge to their own life contexts in addition to unifying education theories and life practices. Furthermore, it makes learning functional and meaningful for the learners by linking them to the real world. It also promotes learners' shared views towards the world with the diverse of positive or negative outcomes as well as helping them improve their self-esteem since they are free to produce their understanding output based on their own perceptions (Schwarz et al., 2020).

Multisensory Teaching/Learning Approach

The widespread use of sensory styles (learning styles/LSs) in recent years, attracted many researchers to zoom on the effects they have in the process of teaching and learning; specifically, neuroscience studies attempt to probe their impact of individual learning preferences on the learning improvement of the students. Different scholars defined LSs differently including Mohammad et al. (2024, p. 2) who stated that: “learning style pertains to the method through which information is received, processed, retained, and utilized effortlessly.” Oxford (1989, p. 235) also defined them as "behaviors or actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed, and enjoyable". Accordingly, Pritchard (2009, p. 41) asserted that people learn differently in a way that reveals their preferences in their styles of learning. It also shows how they think and solve their problems in their own ways. To him, LSs can be defined in various formats, such as: "a) a particular way in which a particular learns; b) a mode of learning; c) an individual's preferred means of acquiring knowledge and skills; and d) a person's typical approach to learning activities and problem-solving" (p. 41). Birsh (2018, p. 2) described LSs as the involvement of visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic sensory system to implement "the phonological, morphemic, semantic, and syntactic layers of language" aspects of language. Delgado et al. (2023, p. 56) observed that learning the English language could be a multisensory movement, hence, the instructive procedures arranged by the instructors must be created in agreement with the learning styles and the abilities in the four main skills.

Pritchard (2009, p. 44) defined three sensory styles as: "visual learners tend to learn through seeing and receiving information by the help of charts, diagrams, graphs, maps, pictures, posters, picture cards, and displays". Moreover, they are able to recall the information, events, and/or objects as images while they are thinking or retrieving the data. To them, teachers should use diverse of activities that engage their visual sense to enhance more of their involvement. Amazingly, they have a tendency to look upwards as they think about a topic or recall a memory.

Pritchard (2009) stated that auditory learners prefer to receive the information by listening. They have the tendency towards audios and take advantage of lectures, audio tracks, podcasts, interviews, tapes, and discussions. To attract their attention, teachers should include repetition, sequence, and summary. Interestingly, they tilt their head or utilize level eye movement as they try to callback the required data.

Pritchard (2009, p. 44) defined tactile learners as the ones who would rather learn by moving and acting. Their memory works best if they create a link between their experience and feelings with physical movements. Field trips, manipulating of objects, hand-in activities, matching, pasting, gluing, and whatever experience that involve their physics suit them. Sitting still is not what they prefer; nevertheless, regular breaks in classroom activities are what make them relief. Therefore, preparing variety of physical activities can be a beneficial strategy teacher need to enrich themselves to create a loving learning environment for tactile preferred style.

According to Jayaynti et al. (2021), learning -styles differences have the potential to impact how learners achieve the input in addition to their effects on the individuals' writing ability due to the fact that they absorb the information differently. The written structure of the text that each performs will vary contingent on how each learner is processing the data. So obviously there will be many dissimilarities in writing. What the teacher should assess is how much their students can write about the presented input. Therefore, students and teachers can both evaluate the needs of learners with diverse learning styles so that it optimizes their learning.

Method

Design

This quasi-experimental study enjoyed a pre-test post-test comparison design to unravel the impact of ICMT technique (the independent variable) on the narrative writing ability (the dependent variable) of EFL learners. To conduct both within and between- groups comparison a number of paired samples t -tests and a Kruskal Wallis test, as the non-parametric equivalent to One-Way ANOVA, were utilized through the use of SPSS software, 20th version.

Participants

Seventy-four school girls (8^th grade) in a secondary state school in Tehran (Shahid Taheri), selected on availability basis, participated in this study. They were all 13 years old speaking Farsi as their mother tongue. The medium of instruction in this school was English. The participants were at A2 level based on CEFER, and they were divided into three experimental groups of visual, auditory, and tactile based on their responses to the Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ hereafter). A pilot group of 30 female students at the 8^th grade from the same school was used to fill out the Persian- translated version of LSQ to assure the researchers about the appropriateness as well as the applicability of its content.

Instruments

To fulfil the requirements of this investigation, certain instruments were utilized as follows:

First, based on the relevant level of the participants, a piloted Cambridge Test of Flyer (mock) was administered for ensuring homogeneity of the learners with regard to their general English knowledge including the four subskills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Special care was taken on the second task of writing section as the pre-test with regard to the three writing factors of understanding the content, choice of vocabularies, and creating logical link among the events either by sentences or connectors following IELTS band score (5 marks for each part, totally 15). The writing section consisted of some related pictures that students had to narrate them based on their understanding. After the implementation of the ICMT technique, a writing section of another Flyer edition was taken as the posttest to compare their writings.

Second, A Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) revised by Cohen et al. (2002) adapted from Oxford (1995), was used to detect the participants' Learning Styles (LSs). The LSQ included 110 items organized in 11 separate sections. For the goal of this study only the first three parts consisting of 30 items, 10 items for each style, which detect sensory styles of visual, auditory, and tactile were included. A 5-Likert scale (0=never, 1=seldom, 2=sometimes, 3=often, and 4=always) is used in this questionnaire. Following the description of the questionnaire designers (Cohen, et al., 2002) the closer their scores to the maximum of the scale, 40, the more reliance of the learner on the preferred style.

Since the present study focused on learning styles of beginner learners, the LSQ was translated and simplified into Persian by the researchers so that it became comprehensible for them. Sequentially, following Tsang et al's (2017) guidelines for developing, translating, and validating a questionnaire, the back translation as well as the suggested stages of: a) forward and backward translation, checked by a bilingual translator; b) expert committee, including three linguists; and c) preliminary pilot testing, using the translated version in another research resembling the intended respondents, were performed.

To fulfil the goal of the research, the 8^th graders' English course book, Prospect 2 (including 7 units) was used to implement its topics. From among the topics of the book, 4 topics of nationality, living abroad, sickness, and new year, were used for the treatment and designing learning styles-relevant tasks. The tasks were derived from BBC council activities matching the selected topics in addition to the activity tips of Pritchard (2009). It is worth mentioning that the instructor tried to nativize the tasks so that they become more comprehensive for the students. For instance, the topic of Christmas was replaced with Nowruz.

Procedure

At the outset of the study, a mock Flyer test was piloted first on 30 learners with similar characteristics to the target sample regarding proficiency level, age, and gender to make sure about appropriateness of the test for the learners' proficiency level. As a result, no modifications were made due to appropriate item characteristics and acceptable reliability index. Then, it was administered to the research sample to check the participants' homogeneity regarding their general English language proficiency as well as their writing ability. Seventy-nine students, in three different classes of 8^th grade, sat for the test and five were excluded due to their lower levels comparing to others; consequently, the study was carried out with 74 participants. Then, the writing subtest of the Flyer test was re-evaluated to check the homogeneity of the writing ability of the learners as well as assessing the three factors of content, choice of vocabulary, and logical connection of the sentences. The researcher, herself, was the only rater who checked and evaluated the whole writings of the participants throughout the study, hence the intra-rater reliability was estimated. Simultaneously, they also sat for the LSQ to distinguish their learning styles. As a result, they were categorized as three groups of visual (N=42), auditory (N=9), and tactile (N=23) based on their preferred LSs. Appropriate writing activities were designed ultimately on the basis of their learning styles inspired by the sources mentioned earlier. Thus, they were exposed to an instruction type including activities corresponding to their learning style and similar to their daily life which incorporated narrative writing.

The teacher explained the topics of the course book including my nationality, my week, my abilities, my health, my city, my village, and my hobbies, as if she was narrating an event to expose them to logical sequencing of the happenings in addition to using connectors of (first, plus, next, after that, etc.). Considering "my week" topic for instance, the visual learners had a series of related pictures by which they had to write about the events as they appeared orderly using discourse markers. Likewise, for the auditory learners, topic-related short story tracks in accordance to the topics like nationality or sickness which was downloaded from British council English learning, was played and they had to narrate it by their own understanding. They had a total of 25 sessions, the very first session was dedicated to a detailed introduction to the whole term. Then, in each of the sessions, they had one track (24 tracks in the entire term of instruction) for their activity. Similarly, the tactile learners had to unscramble picture stories, sort pieces of topic-related stories, or match pictures and then narrate it based on their own perspectives. This means that the teacher selected a topic- relevant story and cut its paragraphs into several sections; then, she handed them over to the students, and they had to read and sort the sections to make the story. Next, they had to write about it following the instructions based on the ICMT technique. The technique was carried out in 24 sessions, October to April, 2023, and after each 4 sessions the teacher gave the students an extra topic, which was similar to the course book topics, and they had to narrate it. Throughout the treatment sessions, she utilized a variety of materials in the class to create a context by which the topics became more comprehensive; for example, to teach "nationality" to visual learners, she used several posters of different countries flags and famous places in addition to display slides; for auditory learners she played an audio track of a conversation among people of different countries, and for tactile learners she used the glob to involve learners finding various countries and then glue and paste the relevant unscrambled short picture stories.

Results

The aim of this investigation was to explore whether ICMT technique can improve narrative writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. Initially, the researchers opted for checking the homogeneity of the learners in the three groups with respect to their writing ability prior to the treatment. To that end, a One-Way ANOVA was utilized. Normality of the distributions of the pre-test scores was checked statistically as shown in Table1:

Table 1

Normality Test for Pre-test Scores

As Table 1 depicts, the three distributions were shown to be normal as skewness ratios are all less than 1.96. Therefore, the normality condition was met.

Table 2 shows the Levene's test of homogeneity of variances.  

Table 2

Test of Homogeneity of Variances for the Pre-test Scores

Table 2 displays that the variances of the three groups' scores were not significantly different (p=.425>.05). Hence, the condition was met.

Table 3 shows the result of One-Way ANOVA.

Table 3

ANOVA on the Groups' Pre-test Scores

As Table 3 shows, the difference between the three groups' pretest mean scores turned out to be non-significant (F=.557, p=.575>.05). As such, the researchers rested assured about the homogeneity of the three groups of learners regarding their writing ability before the intervention.

To compare the pre-test and post-test scores of each group, and to compare the post-test scores of the three groups at the same time, hence to answer the four research questions, a mixed between-within- subjects ANOVA had to be conducted. The conditions were checked primarily. The normality condition was checked statistically as depicted in Table 4.

Table 4

Normality Test of the Pretest and Posttest Scores

As Table 4 evinces, the post test scores of the tactile group were not normally distributed as the sig value came out to be larger than 1.96. The outliers were detected as illustrated in the steam and Leaf graph below:

Figure 1

Steam and Leaf Plot Presenting the Tactile Group's Posttest Scores

As shown in Figure 1, there was only one outlier that was not an extreme one, as it was not shown by an asterisk. Table 5 also shows that the trimmed mean and the mean values are quite similar. Therefore, the researchers decided to retain the score in the data.

Table 5

Descriptive Statistics of the Visual Group's Posttest Scores

Another assumption to be checked for a between-within-subjects ANOVA is homogeneity of inter-correlations which was checked in the Box's M statistic as an SPSS output. Table 6 below shows the result thereof:

Table 6

Box's Test of Equality of Covariance Matrices^a

As Table 6 shows, the sig value turned out to be .021, less than .001. Hence, the assumption is not violated which means that the pattern of the inter-correlations among the pre-test and post-tests within the three groups was the same.

Table 7 displays the result of the check for homogeneity of the variances:

Table 7

Levene's Test of Equality of Error Variances^a

Table 7 illustrates that the variances of the post-tests were significantly different (p=.02<.05). As the size of the groups was not similar, this was interpreted as the violation of the assumption. Therefore, pair-wise comparisons were conducted to answer the research questions.

The First Research Question

To answer the first question related to the impact of the intervention on visual learners' writing ability, and test the corresponding null hypothesis, their pre-test and post-test scores had to be compared via a paired t-test. The normality of the difference scores as the condition for paired samples t -test was checked as shown in Table 8 below:

Table 8

Test of Normality of the Visual Group's Difference Scores

As Table 8 displays, the distribution of the difference scores of the visual group was normal as ratio of the skewness turns out to be 0.558 which is less than 1.96. Hence, the condition is met. The normality of the post-test scores was already shown to be met in Table 4 above.

Table 9

Visual Group's Pretest and Posttest Means

Table 10

Paired Samples t test on the Visual Groups' Scores

Table 10 depicts, that the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the visual learners were significantly different (p=.000<.05). Therefore, the corresponding null hypothesis is rejected. The effect size was calculated by Pallant's (2007, p. 240) proposed formula.

Eta squared=

The result came out to be as large as 0.218 which according to Cohen's (1988) guidelines is a large effect.

The Second Research Question

In order to answer the second research question and test the corresponding null hypothesis, the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the auditory learners were compared through a paired sample t-test. The normalcy of the distribution of both sets of data was shown in Table 4 above. Normality of the distribution of the difference scores was further checked as shown in Table 11:

Table 11

Tests of Normality of the Auditory Group's Difference Scores

As depicted in Table 11, the distribution of the difference scores was normal as the skewness ratio turns out to be 0.12 (less than 1.96). Tables 12 and 13 show the result of the paired samples t-test:

Table 12

Descriptive Statistics of the Auditory Group's Pretest and Posttest Scores

Table 13

Comparison of the Auditory Group's Pretest and Posttest Mean Scores

Table 13 exhibits that the difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores of the auditory group was statistically significant (p=.000<.05). Therefore, the corresponding null hypothesis is rejected. The effect size was calculated through Pallant's (2007) formula. It turned out to be 0.55 which is a large effect according to Cohen's (1988) guidelines.

The Third Research Question

To test the null hypothesis corresponding to the third research question, a statistical comparison was made between the tactile group's pretest and posttest mean scores through a paired samples t-test. The normalcy of the difference scores was verified as shown in Table 14:

Table 14

Normality Test of the Tactile Group's Difference Scores

Table 14 presents the normalcy of distribution of the tactile group's difference scores with the ratio turning out to be 0.46 (less than 1.96). Hence, the condition was met. As it was shown in Table 4 that the posttest scores were skewed, the nonparametric Wicoxon Signed Ranks test was used as the non-parametric equivalent to paired samples t-test. Tables 15 and 16 show the results thereof:

Table 15

Descriptive Statistics of the Tactile Group's Pretest and Posttest Scores

Table 16

Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test on the Tactile Group's Pretest and Posttest Mean Scores

As Table 16 shows, the difference between the tactile group's two mean scores was significant (p=.000<.05). Therefore, the corresponding null hypothesis was rejected. The effect size also turned out to be 0.36 which is a large effect size.

 The Fourth Research Question

Aiming at answering the fourth research question and test the corresponding null hypothesis, the three groups' post-test means were to be compared through a One-Way ANOVA. Since the post-test mean score of the tactile group was shown to be skewed (Table 4), the normality condition is violated. Therefore, the non-parametric Kruskal Wallis test was utilized. Tables 17 and 18 present the results:

Table 17

Ranks of the Groups' Posttest Scores

Table 18

Test Statistics of the Groups' Posttest Scores

Table 18 shows that there was no significant difference among the three groups in terms of their posttest means (p=.609>.05). Therefore, the null hypothesis fails to be rejected.

Discussion

The researchers tried to probe if utilizing ICMT technique can significantly improve narrative writing ability of Iranian EFL learners with diverse learning styles. Furthermore, any possible differential effect of ICMT on the writing ability of the three groups of learners (visual, auditory, tactile learners) was intended to be revealed. The results of the pertinent statistical analyses of the data revealed that all three groups similarly displayed significant improvement in their post-tests compared with their pre-tests. This means that the teaching technique could positively affect their writing ability, and created a great improvement in their writing productions. It was further revealed that the three groups performed similarly in the post-test. This implies that the intervention affected the narrative writing ability of the three groups of learners equally. The finding is congruent with the result of Jayaynti et al.'s (2021) study which revealed a great improvement of participants' writing whose preferred LSs were included. Moreover, following Jayaynti et al. (2021), Birsh (2018), Pritchard (2009), and Oxford (1989), the obtained results proved that involving the preferred styles of the learners in the process of learning can enhance their attentions and motivate them for better performances in their writing skill.

Allcock and Hulme (2010), however, came to the conclusion that although teaching anchored to the learners' learning styles showed to be effective on their posttest performance, students were critical of the match between teaching method and their strongest learning styles. They believed that they may benefit from a variety of activities that would not necessarily match their styles. The authors argue that this may be caused by teachers' misunderstanding of learning styles.

According to what Vygotsky (1978) mentioned about the beneficial role of scaffolding learner's mind, which can improve their imagination, it is a fact that exposing the learners to their preferred learning styles can foster their imagination to scaffold the required topics based on their own comprehension of the world and match their prior knowledge to the new information they receive. Accordingly, since they have the opportunity to see the world with no limitation on their own comprehension, they have a better chance to think out of the box and convert their understandings into desired words. In the same vein, contextualization, as a positive medium of deeper understanding, is advised by different researchers including Bronkhorst and Akkerman (2016), Curtis and Lawson (2001), Berns and Erikson (2000), and Vygotsky (1962) which can enhance learners' recognition of the instructions implemented by the teachers.

It was revealed in the current study that the ICMT technique led to a significantly positive change on the post-test performance of the students compared with their post-tests. Following Berns and Erickson (2001), involving contextualized input in the process of teaching and learning can create a link between the content of learning and the context in which that content is being used; additionally, in an appropriate context, they gain the capacity to utilize acquired skills. Comparably, ICMT assisted learners to become aware of not only a more feasible learning context but also the abilities they need to encounter to change thoughts into sentences through the skill of writing. They gain the capability of how to attain their learning targets by connecting their prior knowledge and experiences with the new ones by the help of their teacher's instruction, which was in accordance with what Vygotsky (1962) described as Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Furthermore, Delgado et al. (2023, p. 56) observed that "learning the English language is a multisensory activity, therefore, the educational strategies planned by the teachers must be developed in accordance with the learning styles and the skills of speaking, reading, listening and writing".

Likewise, Bennet et al. (2007) believed that context-based approaches can increase learners’ interests to solve their problems. They also added that when learners are dealing with similar experience of daily life activities, a positive attitude towards learning might facilitate their learning which can create a bridge between learners’ motivation and learners’ learning and thinking. And, based on a cognitive psychology perspective, proposed by Bruning et al. (2011) and Imuta et al. (2018), contextualization not only assists organizing learning and memory but also settles learners' prior perception of new data.

Conclusions and Implications

As it was already mentioned, the researchers of this study attempted to probe if integrating a contextualized input instruction with students' learning styles could lead to their higher narrating writing achievement. Also, it was intended to reveal if ICMT technique could differentially impact the narrative writing ability of learners with different learning styles. With the rejection of first three null hypotheses with large effect size, it is inferred that the ICMT technique significantly improved visual, auditory, and tactile learners' narrative writing ability. Furthermore, the confirmation of the fourth null hypothesis shows that the three groups of learners performed equally in their post-test which means that the intervention was non-differentially and positively effective on the three groups' writing ability. 

The findings of the present study are corroborated by Beach (1999), Gebre and Polman (2019), Engle (2006), and Engle et al. (2011) in that the researchers' technique led to a better and deeper understanding for the learners in which contextualization contained the information, process, and production of the students in addition to making a meaningful environment by teacher's instructions. Curtis and Lawson (2001), likewise, pointed out that contextual learning and teaching helps both teachers and learners to create connection between subjects and real-life situations. Thus, it motivates learners to foster their learning and attach their knowledge to their own life contexts in addition to unifying education theories and life practices.

Furthermore, the present findings are in line with Mole (2013) who argued that instructors must identify the distinctive characteristics their students and how they learn and adapt material from their environment, be sure that students can learn easily when learning styles are recognized, and designs and implements pedagogical activities anchored to their students' preferred styles.          

This research faced certain limitations, the most important one was the paucity of learners with auditory orientation. In fact, the researchers could not ensure equality of the sample size in the three groups of learners due to this limitation. Furthermore, only female learners were accessible to the researchers. Further studies may consider these issues to validate the present findings.

The present findings imply certain pedagogical implications for EFL teachers. Based on the findings of the present investigation, they are advised to design and prepare appropriate and practical activities according to their students' learning styles in order to enhance their learning in addition to providing a more loving learning environment.

Acknowledgements

We would like to cordially express our gratitude to all learners and their parents for their contribution to this investigation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors hereby declare no conflicts of interests regarding authorship and publication of this article.

Funding Details

The authors received no financial support from any organizations for conducting this study.

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[1] PhD Student of TEFL, nafisehmousavi73@gmail.com; Department of English, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

[2] Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics (Corresponding Author), bmallamiri@gmail.com; Department of English, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

[3] Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, ahmuya@yahoo.com; Department of English, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.