The Effects of Ecology-Oriented Instruction on Enhancing EFL Learner's Writing Competence

The twenty-first century has witnessed an unprecedented pace of environmental issues with catastrophic consequences. Accordingly, an increasing number of initiatives have been seized to solve ecological problems in cooperation. In this regard, integrating eco-friendly practices into EFL classes has received considerable attention globally. However, the effects of ecology-oriented writing instruction have not been explored thoroughly in the Iraq context. Thus, this study was carried out to fill this gap in the literature with 30 EFL learners who studied at a language preparatory school of a private university in the spring semester of the 2022-2023 Academic Year in Erbil. Participants, whose ages were between 18 and 24, were chosen through the convenience sampling method. The study lasted eight weeks when data were gathered via writing exams and interviews in this explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design study. Control group students were exposed to traditional instruction, while experimental group students' lessons were enriched by ecology-oriented writing topics. The in-depth analysis was performed through SPSS 27 and NVivo. The former revealed that experimental group students increased their writing competence more substantially than the control group students. Likewise, interview findings unearthed that students' awareness about ecological problems increased dramatically in the experimental group, while the difference was not significant in the control group. The findings of this study may drive authorized bodies to integrate eco-friendly approaches into academic writing lessons on a global scale.