Using WhatsApp to promote ESL students’ writing

Abstract

This research article illustrates the use of WhatsApp to help tertiary students to improve their English writing skills. The writing activities includes writing emails, paragraphs and essays. This electronic application can help instructors to have an engaging classroom environment by giving the students the opportunity to take their role in the classroom as producers. The main objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which the use of WhatsApp improves students’ writing skills. The second objective of this present study is to identify students’ perceptions about the use of WhatsApp to learn writing inside the classroom. A mixed-methods research was used in this study whereby six writing tests, a questionnaire and focus group discussions were administered. The results of the writing tests and the questionnaire used in this study highlighted that WhatsApp motivated students to use it to promote their writing in English. The research findings will benefit ESL instructors to overcome the difficulties that they may face when teaching ESL writing skills. The findings of this current research will enable the ESL instructors to teach writing effectively using WhatsApp as a supplementary pedagogical tool. The most significant benefit is that educators, teacher trainers and the curriculum planners can take into consideration implementing more technological and educational tools in the teaching of writing. They will also open the door for students to participate in evaluating the learning process and methodology.