A remodeled cognitive vocabulary approach to assessing writing achievement in EFL education

This study investigated the effect of a remodeled Cognitive Vocabulary Approach (CVA) on writing achievement. CVA tasks, designed within a scientific framework, aimed to help students incorporate infrequent vocabulary from two reading units as target vocabulary into their composition writing. Participants, comprising 123 eleventh-grade science-track students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), were divided into an experimental group (n = 63), which engaged in CVA tasks, and a control group (n = 60), which continued with regular instruction focusing on memorization and sentence use. Using a three-month quasi-experimental pre-post design, the study evaluated the relationship between vocabulary retention and writing scores. Results indicated that cognitive tasks significantly improved vocabulary retention and led to notable differences in writing scores between the groups. The study found a strong correlation between lexical diversity and writing performance, demonstrating that CVA tasks were more effective than regular methods.