Teaching Writing Using Online Tools: An Experimental Study at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences

Abstract

Teaching writing has always been a more challenging task for EFL teachers as a result of its innate structural complexities and the linguistic sophistication required to accomplish writing. The pandemic and the resultant online teaching has made it even more challenging. Motivating the students, making the online classes interesting and maintaining the efficacy of the offline classes are some of the daunting tasks that stare at the EFL teachers at this juncture. With a view to addressing these problems, UTAS-Salalah and Ibra jointly conducted a webinar i.e. Teaching Writing Using Internet Tools for the teachers. The online platforms and tools discussed during the webinar, the literature survey, and the participants' feedback form the core of this research paper. The literature survey deals with both the problems of teaching writing and the problems of teaching it online. Then, it also discusses various online tools suggested by other researchers to make teaching writing more effective and fruit-bearing. A feedback questionnaire with Likert scale has been used to measure the efficacy of the proposed tools. The findings appear to confirm the usefulness of the said tools in teaching writing from the teachers' point of view.