PERCEPTIONS OF UPPER-INTERMEDIATE LEVEL EFL LEARNERS REGARDING THE EFFECT OF ONLINE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AND ONLINE FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITING PERFORMANCES


Creative Commons License

Saraç M.

International Ege Congress on Social Sciences & Humanities, İzmir, Türkiye, 02 Eylül 2022, ss.295-300

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: İzmir
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.295-300
  • Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır

Özet

In online foreign language courses, students are assigned online writing tasks, and they are given online feedback for their tasks. Throughout the courses, e-portfolios are used for monitoring the progress and achievements of EFL learners as they present a systematic collection of students' tasks and performances. At the end of the courses, the learners' tasks are graded, and these grades affect the final scores of the learners in end-of-course exams. The current paper aims to explore the perceptions of upper-intermediate level Turkish EFL learners regarding the effect of online writing assignments and online feedback on their writing performances. The study adopted a case study design, and the qualitative data was collected from 24 upperintermediate level EFL learners enrolled in an online language course. The data was collected through semistructured interviews, and content analysis procedures were followed to analyse the qualitative data. A second field expert reviewed the outstanding themes and codes for inter-rater reliability. The content analysis revealed three central themes: strengths, weaknesses and challenges. The study findings revealed a good deal of research evidence on the divergent perceptions of the learners. The learners displayed positive perceptions towards the online writing assignments and online feedback in general on the grounds that they were practical and the learners could use many online tools to improve their writing while doing tasks online. On the other hand, they mentioned weaknesses like lack of authenticity and direct instructor feedback in person. As for the challenges, some participants stated some challenges they faced, like technical issues, loss of data and being unfamiliar with the platforms used. The current research findings provide insights from the learners' perspective and shed light on the requirements for the assignments, implementations and evaluations of online writing tasks. In addition, some suggestions are offered regarding online feedback given to the learners.