Blended Learning: Teaching Writing with Technology

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

Statement of the Problem: Teaching academic writing has always represented an important foundation in university courses. In the past, teaching writing, especially to freshman students, seemed a challenge to many educators because of these problems: The wide spread of plagiarism: students are lured by the plethora of free online sources to copy directly the words of others. The huge amount of paper work that both students and professors have to deal with. Many students are demotivated assuming that they know enough and do not need more English courses.Though computers have revolutionized the way we teach, yet teaching academic writing remained limited to students typing their drafts on their personal computers and sending emails to their professors. Significance and relevance of the work: This paper examines the effectiveness of using Blended Learning (BL) techniques to teach freshman writing. It focuses on a course entitled ENGL 101: Approaches to Critical Reading and Writing; it is devised for freshman students to develop their critical reading and writing skills. On their admission all students take the IELTS test to determine their proficiency level. This course has been chosen because freshman writing courses are widely acknowledged because they promote engagement and enrich rhetorical knowledge and metacognition (James R. Squire Office of Policy Research, 2013).In spite of the widespread of freshman writing courses, not many studies have investigated how technology can be used to overcome the challenges highlighted above. This paper attempts to fill this void by pinpointing the advantages of BL. It adopts McDonald’s definition of BL as a term which “is commonly associated with the introduction of online media into a course or programme, while at the same time recognizing that there is merit in retaining face-to-face (F2F) contact and other traditional approaches to supporting students” (2008, p. 2). The merits of this approach are: In-class activities are more interesting, and students acquire what Yancey (2014) calls textured literacy or “the ability to comfortably use and combine print, spoken, visual, and digital processes in composing a piece of writing” (p. 38) Students can still enjoy the F2F feedback they need from their instructors, Accessing a wide range of authentic material online articles, ads, videos, podcasts, etc. This makes the course more interesting as students feel that writing is part of the world around them which according
Original languageAmerican English
StatePublished - 2015
EventInnovation Arabia 8 Conference, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, UAE -
Duration: 1 Jan 20151 Jan 2015

Conference

ConferenceInnovation Arabia 8 Conference, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, UAE
Period1/01/151/01/15

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Blended Learning: Teaching Writing with Technology'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this