An Empirical Study On Digital Literacy Of English Majors And Its Relationship With Writing Ability

In recent years,the development of information technology exerts significant influence on the learners of the 21^stcentury.Especially during the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020,learners have to learn online at home due to the severity of this epidemic,which requires learners to have a certain level of digital literacy.Digital literacy is one of the basic abilities necessary for learners in the 21st century and also an essential part of the core literacy of students.Therefore,this study aimed to take English majors as research objects to investigate the characteristics of their digital literacy,and to explore the impact of English majors’digital literacy on English learning.To be specific,this study surveyed the relationship between digital literacy and English writing ability.The innovation of this study is to introduce digital literacy in educational technology into English teaching.This study adopted questionnaire and writing tests to investigate digital literacy and its relationship between digital literacy and writing ability.The study took 78English majors from a university in Jiangxi Province as the research participants,and asked them to fill in a questionnaire and complete writing test in a 50-minute class.The questionnaire contained five dimensions and the writing test topic was selected from TEM4 in 2019.After the data were collected,this study first conducted a descriptive analysis of the questionnaire to investigate the characteristics of English majors’digital literacy,and then adopted correlation analysis and regression analysis to explore the relationship between digital literacy and writing ability deeply.The followings are the main findings:（1）English majors’digital literacy（M=3.62）is above the average level.Among the five literacy areas,the level of safety area（M=4.24）is the highest,and the level of information and data area（M=3.81）and the communication and collaboration area（M=3.70）are relatively high,while the level of digital content creation area（M=3.02）and problem solving area（M=3.21）are relatively low.（2）There is a positive correlation between English majors’digital literacy level and writing ability（r=0.519,p=0.000<0.01）.Among the five digital literacy areas,information and date literacy area level（r=0.461,p=0.000<0.01）,communication and collaboration area level（r=0.460,p=0.000<0.01）,digital content creation area level（r=0.396,p=0.000<0.01）and problem solving area level（r=0.426,p=0.000<0.01）have positive correlation with writing ability.（3）Among the five literacy areas,information and data area level as well as communication and collaboration area level have a linear regression relationship with digital literacy.The regression model（R²=0.284,p=0.000<0.01）can explain 28.4%of the variation of writing ability.The development of information technology has enriched writing information resources and promoted communication and collaboration among students in writing.Therefore,English majors with high information and data area level as well as communication and collaboration area level have higher writing abilities.Based on the above results,this research has the following implications for English writing in colleges:1)Colleges should continue to develop English majors’digital literacy to a higher level in a targeted and planned way by building online education,building digital libraries,or creating online elective courses.2)Teachers should pay attention to cultivating students’ability to use online writing resources and the ability of online communication and cooperation in writing teaching.3)Students can make full use of the Internet to share writing resources,conduct online self-writing or collaborative writing.