The effect of learner training on the use of Digital tools to support English Writing Skills

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The effect of learner training on the use of Digital tools to support English Writing Skills

Discussion & Conclusion

Richardson, Nash, and Flora (2014) also pointed out a direct relationship between accessibility and students attitudes towards the use of technology. In the present study, a smartphone and a computer or a laptop at home were common devices accessible by more than 95% of the participating students and they also exhibited a positive attitude towards the use of technology.

Method

Training

Hubbard’s (2004) principles of learner training and Romeo and Hubbard’s (2010) model of training were adopted

The training session was based on three interlinked and sometimes overlapping categories

Strategic Training

Pedagogical Training

Technical Training

Data collection and analysis

A modified version of the SEET questionnaire (Gosper, McKenzie, Pizzica, Malfroy, & Ashford-Rowe, 2013) which was originally designed for tertiary students in Australia, was employed to elicit information about students’ attitudes, beliefs and practices of technologies. It consists of 3 parts:

3rd part: involved demographic information such as age, gender, education level and the amount of time students spent using digital tools each week

2nd part: investigated how students employed technology for various educational purposes;

1st part: to explore the digital tools that students had access to and used for various purposes.

Research design

The object of the training programme was for participants to learn how to use some of the writing support tools available in MS Word

Grammar, Synonyms, Thesaurus, Spell check, Translation and Textto-speech

The study was descriptive in nature, involving

the training sessions

a survey about digital practices

freewriting

pre- and post-training interviews

Time

30 hours per week

5 hrs for online class

5 hrs for self study

20 hrs in the classroom

Participants

English for Academic Purposes course students

Context

A language College in New Zealand

Introduction

International telecommunication Union (2017) has reported a continuing wide gap in the use of Internet: Africa - 21.8%; Asia - 43.9%; Europe - 79.6%.

The use of word processors can offer writing support of various types: automatic corrective feedback and stimulate collaborative learning.

Previous studies have found that computers offer multiple benefits for teaching and learning writing skills

The use of digital tools is not homogeneous all over the world

The TESOL organization set out its Technology Standards Framework for teachers and learners in 2008

Connectivity, technical sophistication and access to technology have continued to increase

Key words

Digital practices

Word processor

Grammar check

Spell check

Writing Skills

Learner training

CALL

Authors: Una Cunningham & Shaista Rashid & Thin Le (2019)

Literature review

Several researchers (Healey, 2007; Hubbard, 2004; Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000) pointed out that...

The main goal of CALL training must be to create autonomous users of technology, which can be achieved by providing both technical and strategic training to the learners

(Reinders & White, 2010) mentions some of the constraints associated with CALL

limited quality control

a lack of systematization

web-advertising

the hidden costs of available resources

a lack of necessary support structures

Distraction from the enormous amount of information available on the Internet

Hubbard (2004) described CALL environments as powerful learning environments + learners must be prepared adequately in order to learn in these environments

offer significant self-learning opportunities, which can yield negative results if learners exhibit lack of technical, strategic and pedagogical skills

Rimrott and Heift (2005) found that ->While working in German as a target language -> MS Word (as used in 2003) missed almost half of the learners’ errors.

-> suggested 1)to understand undetected words are not necessarily correct and that the target word is not necessarily in the list of alternatives provided by the spell checker; 2) using a dictionary as a complement to a spell checker.

Gupta (1998) found that -> students in Singapore using early word processors managed to locate and correct some of their spelling errors; and they also used the spelling checker to generate words that were in their receptive but not in their productive vocabularies.

Xu and Ding (2014) explored-> Chinese Tertiary EFL learners by observing them while writing on computer -> differences in the pause patterns in writing between the skilled writers and less-skilled writers.

The less skilled writers used dictionaries more often to compensate for their linguistic deficiencies

The skilled writers used web searches in English during their pre-writing, whereas both groups used bilingual dictionaries during the actual process

Screen and input capture software was used to capture students’ computer activity.

Prensy (2001) pointed out, the effectiveness of technology is directly -> the users' knowledge of technological tools, their expertise and level of comfort while using these tools.

Sauro (2009) and Ulusoy (2006) have focused on particular tools within word processors:

more advanced features:

Word prediction and etc.

Audiofeedback

Speech recognition

making the editing of work easy

making spelling mistakes visible

Supplying prompts for the writers

Research findings

Students’ perceptions and beliefs about use of technology for language learning were identified with the help of above questions:

Students’ were also asked questions about their practices in the use of MS Word before they began the training programme

how important the need for training in the use of the technology was

how easy the technology was to use

how useful they found the technology to be

Although students perceived technology as a help to them in every aspect of their lives, they realized the importance of the skills required to better utilize it

Students' digital practices

The participants reported spending an average total of 4.3 hours a day online, with quite a range between the most and least online activity (1-8 hours/day; SD 1.8)

E-book readers and tablets were the least common devices

Survey results: the most common devices among students were a computer at home and personal smartphones

they claimed that their use of digital devices for college work was limited to zero to 12 hours per week (mean 5.8 hours, SD 3.8)

On the other hand, Wikipedia was mostly used on a weekly basis. More than 40% of the students mentioned that they never used web conferencing or video chat for educational purposes