Effectiveness of using mobile applications (Whats App and Messenger) on enhancing students' writing skills from the perspective of teachers

Abstract

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of mobile applications in enhancing students' writing skills from teachers’ perspectives at Jazan University. The study seeks to examine the potential use of mobile applications in facilitating the development of writing skills, explore the major writing problems faced by students, and examine the use of WhatsApp and Messenger in improving the student’s writing skills. Moreover, this study will adopt a quantitative research design, and distribute questionnaires among 52 English language teachers teaching at Jazan University, and analyze the data through SPSS, and generate descriptive and inferential statistics. The expected findings of the study are to reveal positive teachers’ perceptions towards using mobile applications in improving writing skills, along with exploring the students’ specific writing problems. This study will contribute a number of messages for improving student’s writing skills in higher education through mobile-assisted learning. Introduction Education has become a new presence in the past few years due to the rapid development of mobile technologies, and many new opportunities for teachers and learners have arisen. There are activities motivating active participation as well as autonomous learning in mobile learning – m-learning, providing students’ off-campus, anytime-anywhere access to educational resources. Among the various language skills, writing is the hardest one for students to learn, especially for EFL learners. It requires not only accuracy in form, but also coherence, fluency, and originality — very difficult things for many students to do. Students in Jazan University have difficulty in acquiring good writing skills, such as limited vocabulary, weak sentences and lack of practice. Traditional classroom teaching, though important, does not always provide opportunities for regular writing practice or immediate correction. As a result, teachers are increasingly trying out innovative teaching approaches, such as technology, for enhancing students' writing. For college students, the accessibility of such sites as WhatsApp and Messenger on cell phones has also contributed to their popularity as the primary communications method. These sites turn social sites into interactive learning environments, allowing students to post their ideas, communicate in written forms, and receive immediate responses from teachers and peers. Such functions make them in addition conveniently applicable tools to help students write more effectively in informal but supportive learning environments. From the teachers' perspectives, it is crucial to find out to what extent mobile applications are effective in developing students' writing skill. The successful adoption of technology into language teaching and designing outcome-oriented instruction depends primarily on teachers. Therefore, teachers' opinions and practices will shed light on how mobile-assisted learning can be most effectively realized. For teachers’ perspectives at Jazan University, this research aims to find out whether the mobile applications are effective or not in developing students' writing skills. And more specifically, it attempts to shed light on how mobile applications influence students' writing skills, state the main difficulties students face while using the applications and examine the usefulness of WhatsApp and Messenger in improving students' writing skills.