developing writing skills eden

Introduction Two key employability skills for today’s

Communication Sciences students are written

communication and computer literacy, particularly

in combination with sound L2 proficiency.

L2 writing skills can be effectively enhanced through

participation in a variety of tasks and activities

incorporated in a Moodle-based course. Taking part

in such a course can also help students improve their

ICT skills.

This is an overview of Moodle activities and other

web tools employed to enhance L2 writing skills in

Writing in English, a course taught by the author at

the Centre for Croatian Studies of the University of

Zagreb. This is a compulsory course for students who

will subsequently go on to work in journalism or

public relations, fields where sound English writing

skills and a basic ICT literacy are vital prerequisites

for those who wish to be competitive in the current

job market.

Figure 1. Borongaj Campus, photo srce.hr

Background on the course Writing in English is a 60-hour seminar attended by

Croatian undergraduate students of Communication

Sciences, as well as by Erasmus students majoring

in related fields, coming from a range of countries.

On average 15 students attend the course in a given

semester, all of whom have English as their L2.

Although the students are required to be at CEFR

level B1, a placement test administered at the

beginning of the course usually shows students to

have varying levels of proficiency ranging from B1

to C1.

Two face-to-face

orientation sessions are

held at the beginning of

the semester. The

remainder of the course

is conducted online and

the final exam is paper-

based.

F

Figure 2. Croatian Studies library, photo srce.hr

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Centre for Croatian Studies

for their readiness to offer the course in an online

format, as well as the University of Zagreb Computing

Centre (SRCE) for technical support. I would also

like to thank the Croatian Academic and Research

Network (CARNet) for their excellent program, the

E-learning Academy, as attending it helped me

develop this course.

Moodle activities and other tools employed in the course

Forum

Wiki

Glossary

Workshop

E-portfolio

Online notice boards

Impacting on student ICT skills A survey taken by Silva, Lourtie, & Aires (2013)

found that computer literacy ranks high on the list of

key employability skills in the view of both online

students and teachers.

Although Writing in English course objectives do not

include specific references to student ICT skills, it is

important to note that students are highly likely to

acquire some of these simply as a result of taking the

course in its online format, particularly those which

their ICT skills practicum does not address, i.e. the

effective use of online collaboration tools, and

effective communication and feedback strategies

and techniques. This increases the students’ overall

ICT literacy, adding to their likelihood of securing

employment upon completing their study

programme.

Vedrana Vojković Estatiev, Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb vedrana@octopus-jezici.hr @Ven_VVE

Literature cited CAMPBELL, A. P. (2003). Weblogs for use with ESL classes In The

Internet TESL Journal, IX(2), Retrieved from

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html.

DAY, M.; BATSON, T. (1995). The network-based writing

classroom: the ENFI idea. In Collins, Marie & Zane Berge (Eds.),

Computer mediated communication and the online writing

classroom volume two: higher education (pp. 25-46). (reprinted

with permission) Retrieved from

http://technorhetoric.com/1.2/coverweb/cmcmday.html

DINAPOLI, R.; ALGARRA, V. (2001). Beyond problem-

orientedness in simulation tasks In S. Posteguillo, I.

Fortanet & J.C. Palmer (Eds.), Methodology and new

technologies in languages for specific purposes (pp. 87-

93)

LEE, I. (2011). Working smarter, not working harder:

revisiting teacher feedback in the L2 writing classroom In

The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue

canadienne des langues vivantes, 67(3), (pp. 377-399)

SILVA, A.P.; LOURTIE, P.; AIRES, L.; (2013). Employability in

online higher education: a case study In The

International Review of Research in Open and Distance

Learning, 14(1), Retrieved from

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1262/

2426 .

Conclusions It may be concluded that the students’ writing skills

and written communicative competence are

enhanced through increased opportunities for

authentic written communication compared with

the classroom environment, as well as through

writing for a wider audience than the instructor

alone, which creates a less artificial writing context.

Student feedback collected at the end of the course

indicated that they felt it beneficial to be doing so

much writing and to be able to read the writing of

their peers, as well as useful to have the experience

of taking part in an online course, as they expect to

engage in this type of learning increasingly in the

future. Further research seems to be necessary

regarding which features of writing are most likely to

see improvement over the course of a semester, and

to what extent feedback has an impact on this.

Developing writing English skills of Communication Sciences students

Corrective feedback and the development of L2 writing skills In an online course, the fact that most of a student’s

written work may be seen by other students raises the

issue of whether the overall effect will be

demotivating if the feedback focuses

disproportionately on error correction.

Bearing this in mind, feedback in the course is given

in the form of comments on the students’ journal

entries in the e-portfolio, as well as short

personalised podcasts and screencasts in the case of

longer pieces of writing. While the comments in the

e-portfolio attempt to engage students in further

discussion on those aspects of each unit which they

have found interesting enough to reflect on, the

podcasts and screencasts provide a commentary on

features of student writing at the textual level, e.g.

cohesion and coherence.