Technology and Writing Skills

There is no doubt that writing is an important skill for both native language and second language. It involves in every aspects of social activities, examination, job application, and so on. In fact, a man with poor writing skill will probably be ‘excluded from a wide range of social roles’ (Tribble 1996). Technologies have provided us with new opportunities and challenges in learning second language writing skills.

To understand how technology can assist us in learning writing skills of second language, we must explore what skills should we acquire for proficient writing abilities in second language. A list created by Cameron (2001) involve in the skills of children learning to write in a second language shows a number of the potential skills we need in order to sufficiently perform in second language writing.

Online Writing Labs (OWLs) created by Purdue University is one of the oldest writing website to assist learners in English writing skills.

It focus on providing language materials as reference for learners outside the classroom. These materials include exercises on spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and summarizing small sections of text. As shown below:

There are also frameworks which help the learner with the organization of genres such as business letters. For example, it the writer wants to write definitions of certain term, this is the website they can go to.

However, I won't complete rely on this website to facilitate my students writing skills since students with relatively lower proficiency level might find it difficult to locate the material they need. Besides, as studies have shown finding or noticing errors and mistakes can also be difficult for second language learners.