Abstract
The “skill plus will” nature of learning has been widely acknowledged. Yet not many studies have given learners’ willpower rightful places in addition to skill when designing and evaluating EFL pedagogical approaches. This project hence proposes to conceptualise the “will” element as “hope”, and employ the notion of “language learning strategy” that actualises “skill”. It then develops an integrated pedagogy, i.e., hope-infused writing strategy instruction, for real-life classroom settings. Through a mixed-method, quasi-experimental design, the hope-infused strategy instruction was found to significantly improve students’ writing performance (including task response, grammar, vocabulary, coherence and cohesion, and idea originality), strategy use, and hope, compared to normal teaching routines. Yet, its relative effectiveness to the traditional strategy instruction only lied in facilitating students’ beliefs in the teacher’s capabilities of helping them nurture writing and moving away from beliefs in innate abilities for EFL writing development that cannot be compensated for by the practice.