The effect of the brainstorming technique on the argumentative paragraph writing of Thai secondary students

Writing is one of the most challenging talents to obtain. Success as a writer requires indirect communication, linguistic structure, writing strategies, and the ability to extract concepts. Consequently, effective writing has become an integral part of teaching and learning English as a foreign language; students of all levels, particularly those in secondary school, who wish to advance their academic achievement must develop their academic writing skills. This study seeks to investigate the effect of the brainstorming technique on argumentative paragraph writing and the attitudes of Thai EFL secondary students towards the use of brainstorming technique in argumentative paragraph writing. The scoring rubric for writing was designed to evaluate the three aspects of the participants' argumentative paragraph writing tasks. In addition, a semi-structured interview was also conducted to examine the attitudes regarding the application of the brainstorming technique to argument paragraph writing. Following the procedures outlined by Creswell (2007) for interview analysis, students' pre- and post-test mean scores and standard deviations, as well as their attitudes towards brainstorming in argumentative paragraph writing, were collected, and analyzed as qualitative data. It was discovered that the overall mean scores for argumentative paragraph writing increased significantly. Prior to the test, the mean score for argumentative paragraph writing was 10.15, with a standard deviation of 1.50. The mean post-test score was 12.35, and the standard deviation was 1.46. Clearly, post-test scores increased significantly from pre-test scores without treatment to 2.30. This improvement contributed to the development of positive attitudes towards the writing process. The research indicates that brainstorming should be actively studied in secondary school classrooms to improve students' writing abilities.