Abstract:

This presentation will take the audience on a journey through recent pedagogical writing theories and show how they can be implemented and enhanced by modern technology. We start with how “Process writing” developed into “Post Process” writing by placing more emphasis on the social aspect, viewing writing as a social construct rather than an individual one. We then move onto genre-based pedagogy specifically the stage known as “Joint construction”. Modern Technology can not only facilitate these developments but also redefine and drive them by allowing students to collaborate more easily with each other and with their tutor. Using online writing tools such as “Googledocs” or adapting office management systems like “Quip”, students can work on the same writing task and use text to chat with each other and their tutor about the content, organization and language they need to complete the task. The presentation will show how technology can be used to open new channels of communication between the students and the tutor. This will be demonstrated by a study that examined the effects computer-mediated communication had on the academic writing skills of a group of intermediate female Arabic students studying Academic English in a Middle Eastern university. The students used a collaborative writing tool called “Quip” to write a series of essays. This tool allowed the tutor to support the students’ writing throughout the process. The support was in the form of synchronous and asynchronous text-based chat and direct corrective feedback which meant the tutor could provide support to the students when they were outside the classroom. A discourse analysis of the dialogic chat reveals how it was used by the students and the tutor. The tutor acted as a “participant observer” to record his thoughts and the perceptions of the students during the course. In addition, surveys were given at the start and end of the course to gain further insights into the students’ opinions. Although research has been undertaken into the effect of synchronous or asynchronous computer-mediated communication before, there has been little looking at the effects of them in combination. Furthermore, much of the prior research has originated in the Far East and there has been little study of Arabic learners. Results showed that many students exploited the opportunity to engage in dialogic interaction via text and benefited more from the support that the tutor was able to provide than from peer support. The students seemed to spend an increased time editing and improving their essays as they responded to feedback both in the form of dialogic interaction and more specific focused feedback from the tutor. The use of technology allowed the tutor to be part of the process of writing from the early stages of the task and to “co-construct” the essay with the students thus changing the dynamic between the tutor and the students and the process of writing itself. This study provides a useful insight into how technology can be used to develop and redefine traditional teaching techniques and can be an important tool for implementing the new approach of joint construction in genre-based pedagogy.

Keywords:

Process Writing, Post Process writing, genre-based pedagogy, Joint construction, collaborative writing, computer-mediated communication.