Systematic Review: The Effectiveness of Digital Tools to Improve Writing Skill of ESL Students
Vickneasvarie Ramamuthie, Azlina Abdul Aziz
Abstract
Despite the evolution in technology, some teachers rely on conventional methods to teach millennials writing skill. Consequently, students lose interest and fail in mastering the challenging skill. It is high time teachers change their pedagogical approaches and develop awareness on technology-oriented approach in improving writing skill. Thus, this paper aims to provide a systematic review on the studies done in the past pertaining to the effectiveness of digital tools in improving English as Second Language (ESL) students' writing skill. A total of 16 Malaysian articles, published within 2017 to 2021 in various credible databases, were selected and reviewed. The review addressed the following research question: 1) How effective are digital tools in improving writing skill of ESL students? The findings were presented in table and discussed according to the writing approaches: product-based and process-based. It was found that digital tools improved the students' writing skill and developed their language knowledge, particularly grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation. Moreover, students became autonomous learners as they had access to explore knowledge virtually beyond the physical classroom. From the findings, it is recommended that future studies should explore digital tools like Google Classroom as it is less researched in writing context.