The Impact of Exploratory Practice: A Mixed-Methods Study on Writing Motivation and Performance among EFL Undergraduates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Impact of Exploratory Practice: A Mixed-Methods Study on Writing Motivation and Performance among EFL Undergraduates. Investigating the effects of Exploratory Practice (EP) on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ motivation and writing skills can provide new insights into improving writing classes. Objective: The objective of the present study is to investigate the impacts of EP on a group of EFL college students’ writing motivation and writing skills. Methods: This study employed a quasi-experimental research design, implementing reflective discussions and collaborative inquiry through EP. To understand improvements in students’ motivation, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were administered to 23 participants. Findings: The quantitative results showed some improvements in students’ self-efficacy, extrinsic motivation, and writing scores. However, intrinsic motivation and efforts to complete writing tasks did not show statistically significant changes. To better understand these nonsignificant results, qualitative data were used to explore students’ experiences during the EP process. Participants reported increased confidence, reduced anxiety, and greater ability to organize ideas through peer discussions and reflective activities. They also described a more meaningful, less mechanical writing process, which may indicate early signs of motivational internalization, even if not reflected quantitatively. Conclusion: The outcomes imply that EP can be a feasible approach to enhance students’ motivation and writing skills in an EFL context. Despite the apparent success of EP in this study, its successful implementation in writing classrooms depends on students’ involvement in the learning and teaching process and teachers’ continuous support. Keywords: exploratory practice, writing motivation, EFL learners, reflective learning, writing performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".