Proposing a Cognitive EFL Writing Model Based on Personality Types and Narrative Writing Intelligence: A SEM Approach

The significance of writing in academic and career success seems to be undeniable. Several studies have investigated the effect of linguistic factors on writing quality, but cognitive factors seem to be nearly neglected. This paper aimed to investigate the role of two cognitive factors, namely, personality traits and narrative writing intelligence (NWI) in L2 writing. For this study, a narrative writing intelligence scale (NWIS) was designed and used to score the writings of the first group of participants which included 200 Iranian learners of English. A writing task, which was a film recounting, contributed to designing this scale based on Randall’s (1999) definition of narrative intelligence. Two experienced raters rated all 200 written versions of film recounting, using this scale. SPSS (version 18) was used to analyze the data, and Exploratory Factor Analysis was run to identify the underlying factors. The results of EFA yielded a three-factor solution: Unity of the plot, Identification (of characters, objects, and ideas), and Voice and Rhetoric. The second group, who were female university students of EFL, were asked to write a memory and to fill the Big-Five Personality Inventory. Their writings were evaluated twice; once by employing the NWIS and once by a tailor-made writing scoring guide taken from Weigle’s (2002) guidelines. Afterward, an SEM model was proposed. The results show the proposed model has good fit indices, which confirms the influence of cognitive factors on writing ability.