Abstract

Abstract
1. Introduction
In educational systems, the enhancement of literature and the improvement of language skills are of paramount importance. Teaching the native language to promote proper writing is a major objective of including general Persian courses in universities. However, the current structure of this course has led instructors to take a subjective approach to their teaching, relying on personal preferences and assumptions to opt for specific curriculum elements. Consequently, there seems to be less focus on teaching writing skills. In recent years, various methods have been presented to enhance writing skill instruction. These methods, however, tend to focus only on the act of “writing”, ignoring creativity, innovation in writing, as well as students’ emotions about the subject. Despite this, student creativity in writing is directly associated with the emotions they experience in the classroom, which implies that senses can be used to improve writing skills. Shayesteh et al. (2019) identified two types of multisensory learning: multisensory education and multimodal education. In the former, the instructor creates a teaching setting that engages students’ five senses directly (centrisense) and indirectly (perisense). In the latter, the instructor aims to teach related concepts through the senses to engage all five senses.

This study seeks to explore the effectiveness of utilizing multisensory and multimodal education to improve writing skills in general Persian language courses. This research introduces multisensory and multimodal education methods, evaluates their effect on writing skill improvement, and offers a sample lesson plan based on this approach.
2. Research Method
This applied and qualitative study presented two models for teaching academic writing skills: multisensory education and multimodal education. To this end, the paper first describes the methodology for designing educational materials based on these instructional approaches. Then, a sample lesson for descriptive writing based on this model is presented. The lesson uses various tools such as images, videos, and group exercises to strengthen students’ academic writing skills, engage their senses and emotions, and boost creativity. The design of the sample lesson emphasized the use of transvolver techniques. The instructor’s humor, self-disclosure, and storytelling are among these techniques, which indirectly encourage students to communicate. The designed lesson focused on these techniques.

After designing the lesson, the researchers investigated the impact of multisensory education and multimodal education and traditional teaching methods. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 181 students from different fields of study at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. They were divided into three groups corresponding to each teaching method. After seven teaching sessions, the students’ satisfaction with the methods was measured. The number of sessions was chosen in accordance with the Ministry of Science’s syllabus for the writing skills component of the General Persian course. Convenience and purposive sampling were used and data collection proceeded until response saturation was reached. The students answered interview questions in pre-test and post-test sessions for their respective teaching methods, and the responses were coded and the results analyzed using MAXQDA.
3. Findings
After introducing multisensory education and multimodal education models, a sample lesson is presented to examine the effectiveness of this approach in teaching Persian writing in the General Persian course. Description is a frequently used linguistic tool for creating connections and conveying feelings and emotions to others. In fact, effective descriptions express sound, taste, smell and image of objects, people’s faces, and spaces to others. Accordingly, a sample lesson for descriptive writing based on multisensory education and multimodal education was presented. To teach descriptive writing using the multisensory education method, the instructor may utilize real materials and objects in the classroom. For instance, before the session, the instructor could ask students to bring their favorite fruit to class. Then, they are asked to first smell what they have brought and write down their feelings in the form of an adjective or a sentence on paper.

After introducing multisensory education and multimodal education models, semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the students’ level of satisfaction. The analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that the students’ inclination towards academic writing in the multimodal education method increased from 11.35% to 37.32%, and in the multisensory education method, it increased from 20.31% to 42.86%. The inclination towards traditional writing declined, with the percentage in the ‘low’ and ‘very low’ categories increasing from 17.21% to 50.01%. This suggests that multisensory education and multimodal education models outperformed the traditional model. Concerning the second question, Table 2 shows the students’ inclination towards writing. As shown, there was no significant change in the students’ personal inclination. However, the proportion in the ‘low’ and ‘very low’ categories (34.57%) exceeded that in the ‘high’ and ‘very high’ categories (27.18%), indicating a generally low interest in writing. The results for this question revealed that multisensory education and multimodal education models outperformed the common traditional teaching approaches at university.
4. Results
In teaching, the senses are part of the perceptual process, which greatly affects students’ attention, and motivation. Therefore, they deserve attention while teaching writing and its skills, and consequently, teaching approaches should be given priority that boost the retention of material in students’ minds. This is because multiple senses in learning help learners retain knowledge for longer, and the more senses engaged, the more effective learning becomes. This research introduces multisensory education and multimodal education methods, which incorporate both sensory engagement and emotional involvement in developing educational materials for academic writing.

To illustrate the approach, a sample lesson was designed and presented. Since description applies across all writing genres, it was selected as the focus of the lesson. In both multisensory education and multimodal education methods, multiple senses were activated through images, videos, listening activities, and hands-on tasks such as role-playing. It seems that sensory-based techniques play an important role in increasing emotional engagement and improving the teaching of academic writing skills.
Since evaluating students’ satisfaction with teaching methods is of significance, in the next step, the designed lesson was taught in three groups: traditional, multisensory and multimodal education methods. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with the students. It was found that multisensory methods increased students’ willingness to write from 32.81 to 63.20. However, the students in the classes taught with traditional methods showed very little interest or willingness to write. Therefore, multisensory education methods may enhance social interaction and group support. In fact, through greater engagement with their environment, students experienced higher self-efficacy in writing. These findings are consistent with Graham (2019), who emphasized the importance of students’ cognitive and motivational factors in their writing performance. When students strive to boost their motivation, they write more effectively. Thus, it is recommended that methods aimed at enhancing behavioral motivation and writing skills be given greater emphasis to students.