(1820) THE IMPACT OF A DIGITAL WRITING TOOL ON LEARNERS' SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

摘要

Research has demonstrated the positive impact of Web 2.0 tools such as forums, blogs, and wikis onwriting education in second-language (L2) classrooms. Building on the ideological and technologicalplatform of Web 2.0, other computer-mediated communication such as social media (e.g. Facebook)has become popular. Social media allow participants to generate and exchange content within a reallifesituated setting. However, there is limited research on the use of social media in teaching practicesin general, and writing instruction in L2 teaching in particular. Although a small but growing body ofresearch has indicated positive effects of social media on learner's attitudes and learning outcomeswithin the practice of writing instruction in L2 teaching, there is little focus on the actual learning andwriting process. This paper will thus further explore the learning possibilities of the use of social mediain L2 writing education. As such the following research questions were formulated: Does the use of thedigital writing tool Storify affect the self-reported self-efficacy of L2 level? What is the learners'perception of the digital writing tool Storify? Our research design focused on a comparison oftraditional and digital writing processes by integrating the digital writing tool Storify into the learningprocess. For this, a repeated measures design was set up over six weeks. University students(n=149), who were non-native speakers of English, were asked to compose a research plan inEnglish. They started the assignment via traditional writing software, but finished the assignment viaStorify. At the beginning and after each condition, students completed a survey indicating their selfperceivedlevel of efficacy in English as a second language. Finally, a survey representing thestudents' acceptance of the tool was completed. Our analysis shows that the self-efficacy scoresdiffered statistically significantly between the three test moments. Post hoc tests revealed that bothconditions generated a statistically significant increase in the self-efficacy score. Moreover, studentsindicate that the digital writing tool Storify is easy to use. In general, we can conclude that writing via adigital writing tool over a longer period of time can improve a student's self-perceived level of selfefficacyin English as a second language.