Assessing the Writing Skill

A study which entitles Exploring the Relationship of Creative Thinking to Reading and Writing was conducted by Wang. This study investigates whether there is any significant relationship between personal creative thinking and reading and writing. The sample of this study covered 196 students who studied in a university in Taiwan. Meanwhile, the instruments used were questionnaire which measured the personal attitudes toward reading and writing, estimated hours spent on different reading and writing, and the participants’ background information, and creativity test i.e. Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. This study arrived at a conclusion that the students spending more time on readingwriting had a significant better performance on the creativity test. Therefore, creativity is considered to have a significant association with attitudes toward readingwriting and the amount of time spent on readingwriting. 34 Next, a study under the title The Level of Creativity in English Writing among Jordanian Secondary School Students was conducted by Rababah et al. This study aimed to investigate the level of creativity in English writing. The sample of this study encompassed 100 secondary school students in Irbid and Amman cities in Jordan. The instrument employed was Torrance Test of Creative Thinking which was adapted and translated into the Arabic language. The findings indicated that 65 of the participants had moderate level in terms of their creativity in English writing, 19 participants were in the low level, and 16 participants were in the high level. As a result, this study arrived at a conclusion that most of the students had moderate level of creativity in English writing. 35 In addition, Pishghadam conducted a study of which title is Learner Creativity and Performance in Written Narrative Tasks. This study intended to investigate the relationship between learner creativity and performance in written narrative tasks in the context of Iranian EFL students. The sample of this study covered 222 students of four universities in Mashad, Iran. The instruments used consisted of a narrative written task and a questionnaire which gauge the participants’ creativity in terms of fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration 34 Amber Yayin Wang, loc. cit. 35 Luqman M. Rababah et al., The Level of Creativity in English Writing among Jordanian Secondary School Students, Arts and Design Studies, 10, 2013, pp. 25—29. FFOE. At last, a significant relationship were found between learners’ performance in written narrative tasks and their total creativity and also with some sub constructs of creativity, i.e. fluency, originality, and flexibility were found. 36 Moreover, The Relationship between Creativity in Thinking and Writing Performance of Iranian EFL Learners on ComparisonContrast was the next relevant study which was conducted by Soleimani and Najafgholian. This study intended to investigate the relationship between creativity in thinking and writing performance in comparison-and-contrast type of writing. The sample of this study encompassed 107 students from three universities in Tehran. The instruments used were the questionnaire and Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and Abedi Test of Creativity test to measure the participants’ creativity, and writing essay test. This study arrived at a conclusion that there was a significant positive relationship between creativity in thinking and writing performance in comparison-and-contrast. 37 Furthermore, another study of which title is Relationship of Creative Thinking with the Academic Achievements of Secondary School Students was conducted by Anwar et al. The intent of this study was to investigate whether there was a significant relationship between creative thinking and academic achievement of secondary school students. The sample of this study covered 256 students who had passed the Secondary School Examination from Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, in Gujranwala city. The instruments used were Torrance Test of Creative Thinking TTCT and documentation of students’ results on school examination. The study reached a conclusion that there is any significant relationship between creative thinking and students’ academic achievements. 38 Based on the relevant studies discussed above, the present study has some positions, including similarities and differences, in comparison with the relevant 36 Reza Pishghadam, Learners Creativity and Performance in Written Narrative Tasks, World Journal of Education, 1, 2011, pp. 115—125. 37 Hassan Soleimani and Sara Najafgholian, loc. cit. 38 Muhammad Nadeem Anwar et al., Relationship of Creative Thinking with the Academic Achievements of Secondary School Students, International Interdisciplinary Journal of Education, 1, 2012, pp. 44—47. studies above. This section attempts to describe those similarities and differences in details. The first similarities and differences are seen in the light of the research variables investigated. In this case, the present study can be considered as a more specific study than the study conducted by Wang because the present study only focuses on creative thinking ability in association with writing ability whereas Wang employed Reading and Writing as the independent variable which is associated with creative thinking. Meanwhile, although Rababah et al, Pishghadam, and Soleimani and Najafgholian’s studies applied the same independent variable, i.e. writing, the present study is considered different from their studies because it more specifically focuses on investigating writing recount text. Moreover, the present study quite different in terms of the independent variable employed from the study conducted by Anwar et al who investigated academic achievement as the independent variable which was correlated with creative thinking. The next similarities and differences are seen in terms of the research methods. In this case, the present study is similar to the studies conducted by Wang, Pishghadam, Soleimani and Najafgholian, and Anwar et al who employed a correlational research method. However, it is different from the method used by a study conducted by Rababah et al who applied descriptive method. The next similarities and differences are seen based on the research instruments used. In this case, all the previous relevant studies who investigated writing i.e. Wang, Rababah et al, Pishghadam, and Soleimani and Najafgholian as the independent variable applied the same writing instrument, namely writing test, whereas in terms of the instrument used to measure creative thinking, the present study is different from a study cinducted by Pishghadam who used questionnaire to gauge creative thinking, whereas it is partially similar to the studies conducted by Wang, Rababah et al, Soleimani and Najafgholian, and Anwar et al who used test that assessed FFOE of creative thinking ability.