Effect of pre-writing activities through online forums on writing tasks.

Abstract

Authenticity and meaningful pedagogical practices acquire new dimensions in a world where digital technologies have become an integral part of everyday life and have introduced new elements to social interaction (Dussel & Quevedo, 2010). In this scenario, meaningful English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching can neither ignore the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) nor fail to incorporate issues related to online learning. However, there is still little systematic evidence of the gains of web-based language learning (WBLL) in higher education (Ngo, 2016; Tri & Nguyen, 2014). Given the need to focus on meaningful uses of ICTs and their impact on the development of language learning skills, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of pre-writing activities through online forum debates on writing tasks carried out in the virtual classroom of an English Language II course at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. This will help us to determine whetherthe collaborative construction of knowledge evidenced in students´ contributions to the forum during the first stage of this project is also reflected in their productions (Dalla Costa & Gava, 2016). The specific objectives are: a) to analyse the effects of the online pre-writing activities through collaborative forum debates on students´ writing tasks, and b) to compare them to the results of a survey carried out to obtain the students´ perceptions of the online activity. To this end, we review prior research on ICTs and language teaching focusing on the usefulness of digital technologies for the development of EFL writing skills. We develop a pedagogical approach to collaborative learning and communicative language teaching, and a conceptual framework based on Bloom´s (1971) taxonomy of cognitive skills for the construction of knowledge. We also describe the methodology used for the analysis of students´ written productions. Finally, we present the results and limitations of this study, its pedagogical applications and future lines of research.