| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how adopting a blended learning approach may help in developing teachers’ pedagogical practices and have a significant impact on students’ ability to master academic writing in English as a second language (L2 academic writing) at a Saudi governmental university, with specific focus on Preparatory Year Programmes (PYP) classrooms. To ensure that blended learning facilitates the teaching and learning of L2 academic writing, this study is participatory in nature as it adopted a pragmatic postmodern standpoint with consideration to Social Constructivism. This was achieved by employing a cyclic intervention study in which the intervention programme was developed, implemented, iteratively refined, and evaluated in three macro cycles using different qualitative data sets collected from one L2 academic writing teacher and her advanced classroom. The developed intervention programme included several digital tools and teaching methods and techniques deemed to have the potential of 1) shifting the teaching of L2 academic writing from a predominantly linguistic and syntactic approach to a process/genre-oriented approach and 2) encouraging EFL students to construct knowledge in different ways and be able to develop their L2 academic writing skill in composing different academic genres.
This study aimed to reach the most appropriate version of the intervention programme within three phases: 1) the preparation phase, 2) the intervention phase, and 3) the evaluation phase. In the preparation phase, the intervention programme was developed by triangulating the findings from the initial semi-structured interview with the teacher, with consideration to the conclusions from the literature, the taught syllabus, and the department’s requirements. In the intervention phase, the refinements of the intervention programme in the three macro cycles were presented using the data collected from the reflection sessions with the teacher at the end of each macro cycle. Also, the findings shared by the teacher in the initial semi-structured interview before implementing the intervention programme were compared to what she discussed in the reflection sessions in order to track the changes in her teaching practice before, during, and after the intervention programme. Nevertheless, the changes in the students’ writings were also tracked by analysing their individual writing samples for each unit. Finally, in the evaluation phase, the adopted teaching techniques and online platforms in the intervention programme were evaluated using qualitative data sets collected through two semi- structured interviews with nine students with different engagement levels and one focus group discussion with ten randomly chosen students.
The findings of this cyclic intervention study indicated that the refined intervention programme which adopted a blended learning approach facilitated the teaching and learning of L2 academic writing in the chosen preparatory writing classroom. This was mainly reflected in changing the teacher’s teaching practice of teaching L2 academic writing with a predominantly linguistic and syntactic approach to teaching it with a process/genre-oriented approach. In addition, the students’ individual writing samples reflected progress and development at the sentence, paragraph, and essay levels. However, the findings also revealed unexpected results regarding the students’ needs for an appropriate amount of face-to-face teaching, online teaching, and teacher guidance. This study concludes with practical suggestions, implications, and recommendations that can benefit other EFL educational contexts and future research focusing on the teaching and learning of L2 academic writing in EFL contexts. | en_GB |
