Nasim Ghanbari

The use of integrated writing tasks instead of traditional impromptu writing-only tasks is gaining ground in the teaching and assessment of EFL/ESL writing. Source text as the distinct feature of the integrated writing and the concern to improve its quality for the enhanced students’ engagement has been a fertile line of inquiry. In this regard, the present study used a body of 67 Iranian intermediate EFL learners in three modalities: emotionalized reading-to-write (ERW) group which received emotionally-loaded source texts along with the emotional activities based on Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence framework, reading-to-write (RW) group which developed their essays based on the texts with no focus on their emotional content and a writing-only (WO) group as the control group which followed the traditional writing procedure. The findings showed that ERW group outperformed RW group on the integrated writing tasks. In addition, ERW group performed better than the RW and WO on the overall independent writing task. Furthermore, the emotional intelligence of the students in the ERW group improved more than that of the RW and WO groups in the study. The study discusses that the emotional content of the source text followed by the emotionalized activities would significantly enhance the learners’ engagement with the source text in the reading-to-write tasks and consequently improve their writing. The implications and suggestions for further research are next discussed.