Abstract
Reading short stories can help students improve their writing abilities by providing them with a broad variety of tools to work with. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of reading short English stories on the writing skills of third-intermediate Saudi Arabian EFL students. The study takes a quasi-experimental approach with two groups of participants who were subjected to pre- and post-tests following instructional intervention. The study hypothesis is that reading fiction helps EFL students improve their English writing abilities. The study sample comprises of 40 students (20 each randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups). The intervention lasted four weeks during which time the experimental group focus on reading short tales in English. Results in the post-test show that the students' writing skills improve, while no perceptible change is seen in the writing performance of the control group. It was obvious that the experimental and control groups had statistically significant disparities in writing ability. This observation is taken to imply that since other factors remained unchanged, the intervention based on reading short stories in English enhanced the writing abilities of the experimental group members. These findings are reflected in the data. Further, these findings show that concentrated exposure to language through short stories coupled with careful selection of reading strategies can benefit EFL students' writing skills in English. What we learn from this study gives us a lot to think about in terms of the tools we use to assist kids organize their thoughts and the best approach to allocate instructional time and resources to help young writers.