Arab Educational Information Network

The study was an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of a suggested sensory based program in developing first year university EFL majors’ sensory vocabulary knowledge and descriptive writing performance. The study participants were 84 first year students majoring in English language at the Faculty of Education, October 6 University, Egypt. The participants were randomly divided into two equal groups. To collect the data, a sensory based program, a sensory vocabulary knowledge test, and a descriptive writing performance test were designed and implemented. Before the intervention, all the participants were pretested. While the experimental group participants (n=42) were exposed to the sensory based program, the control group participants (n=42) received their regular writing instruction. Results revealed that the sensory based program was more effective than regular writing classes in developing EFL students’ sensory vocabulary knowledge. Similarly, the sensory based program was effective in developing EFL students’ descriptive writing performance. Based on the study results, it was recommended that using senses in teaching/learning writing genre in EFL contexts should be adopted as an effective and attractive pedagogy. (Published abstract)