Improving L2 learners’ IELTS task 2 writing: the role of model essays and noticing hypothesis

Achieving a sufficient IELTS band score for academic purposes has been a major goal of many L2 learners around the world, especially those in Asia. However, IELTS writing scores were consistently reported to be the lowest when compared to the scores in speaking, reading, and listening. Despite a growing body of research in IELTS writing, little focused on the role of model essays and noticing hypotheses. The present study aimed to fill in this gap by examining whether or not the implementation of both noticing hypothesis and model essays had a discernible influence on learners’ IELTS task 2 writing. To reach this goal, a quasi-experimental design including a pretest and a posttest was conducted with the voluntary participation of 52 undergraduates. These participants were divided into two groups: control group (CG, n = 25), learning in the conventional method (peer feedback and teacher feedback), and experimental group (EG, n = 27), using the noticing-model essays method. Following this, semi-structured interviews were performed to gain insights into the quantitative data. The results from this mixed-methods approach showed that there were significant gains in the overall performance and in the lexical resources subscale in the EG while no considerable changes were observed in the CG. Additionally, the other subscales (task response, grammatical range and accuracy, and cohesion-coherence) did not witness any significant differences between the two groups. Several pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research, especially in the Asian context, were also discussed.