FROM TEXT TO TECHNOLOGY: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES–BASED WRITING INSTRUCTION IN ESL CLASSROOMS

Abstract

By incorporating Digital Humanities (DH) in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, this paper has examined how the use of such tools can support writing skills in the study of students. With the rising need of English skills in our digitalized world, there are urgent demands of leaving behind conventional grammar-based model of instruction delivery and switching to technology-augmented pedagogies. Pre-tests and post-tests were conducted on two groups; experiment group and control group all composed of undergraduate students of ESL. The experimental group also got the training assistance of DH tools, whereas in the control group the traditional methods were used. The SPSS statistical analysis found that there was a remarkable difference in writing performance in the experimental group compared to results in content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. It was a quasi- experimental study that was conducted on a sample associated with 44 undergraduate students that were split into an experimental group and a control group (n = 22 each). The control group was guided through the traditional learning techniques.