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The Effect of Learner Training on the Use of Digital Tools to Support…
The Effect of Learner Training on the Use of Digital Tools
to Support English Writing Skills
many benefits of the use of computers for writing has been shown to offer to language learners.
Advanced features.
motivate learners
particular tools within word processors
supplying prompts for the writers,
making spelling mistakes visible,
making the editing of work easy,
speech recognition,
audio feedback,
word prediction,
as Prensky (2001) pointed out, the
effectiveness of technology is directly related to
users’ knowledge of technological tools,
their expertise
level of comfort while using these tools.
Method
The research context and the participants.
The study was carried out over a one-week course at a language college in New Zealand
The college offers English for Academic Purposes (EAP-1 and EAP-2) courses to students who need to improve their academic English skills for tertiary studies in New Zealand.
comprised of 20 hours of
study in the classroom, five hours of self-study, and five hours of online study
The participants in this study belonged to an
EAP-2 group and had been studying English at the college for 3 weeks when the study began.
Data collection tools and analysis
Free writing:
The participants were asked to write about their views on the use of technology
for different purposes with a special focus on learning the English language.
Survey:
A modified version of the SEET questionnaire which was originally designed for tertiary students in Australia, was employed to elicit information about students’ attitudes, beliefs and practices of technologies.
The questionnaire had three parts.
The second part investigated how students employed technology for various educational purposes; students were asked to indicate their current practices and future preferences in the use of technology for learning and communicating with teaching staff and other students for study-related purposes.
The third and final part involved demographic information such as age, 35 gender, education level and the amount of time students spent using digital tools each week.
The first part aimed to explore the digital tools that students had access to and used for various purposes.
The pre- and post-training pen and paper and MS Word
writing samples
Training
Hubbard’s (2004) principles of learner training
Hubbard (2004) pointed out that preparing learners to use effective strategies in a CALL environment increases the effective use of technological tools for language learning
and it also improves participants’ ability to support their learning objectives through utilizing multiple strategies.
Romeo and
Hubbard’s (2010) model of training were adopted.
overlapping categories
1) Technical Training,
2) Strategic Training,
3) Pedagogical Training.
Research design
The study was descriptive.
pre- and post-training interviews
free-writing
a survey about digital practices and the training sessions.
The object of the training
programmeTr
participants to learn how to use some of the writing support tools
available in MS Word:
Grammar,
Synonyms,
Thesaurus,
Spell check,
Translation,
Text-to-speech.
Pre-Training
Free-writing
Pre-training interviews
Surveys about digital practices
Post-Training
Post-training pen and paper writing
Post-training MS Word writing
Post-training interviews
Training.
Five-day training was provided
Pre-training MS Word writing
Pre-training pen and paper writing
Research Findings
Students’ digital practices
the participants wanted to use while at college were their smart phones.
Use of digital tools for non-educational purposes.
internet search engines were used daily by
more than 80% of the students to find information.
Use of digital tools for educational purposes.
More than 85% of
students also mentioned that they wanted to use video chat on their mobile devices.