Action Research On The Effects Of Academic English Writing Skills For Specific Purposes By Using Online Teaching Effectively

In recent years,the researches on academic literacy have been widely concerned.It has been pointed out that the establishment of ‘pedagogically useful framework’ needs to be solved in the academic writing instruction.This study used online teaching based on the CALL(computer-assisted language learning environments)on an academic writing course in order that the pedagogical framework can be effectively improved.This study adopted action research methodology to explore the effects of using online teaching on college students’ academic writing instruction based on the CALL environments.The action research aims at facilitating a student-centered learning environment by implementing the online task-based instruction and cultivating the collaborative learning method.This study attempts to investigate the effects of online academic writing instruction on students’ academic writing ability especially in terms of learning motivation,learning autonomy and academic writing proficiency.This action research project was conducted in a university in Northeast China.The research duration lasted 16 weeks in the spring semester of 2019-2020 academic year.The number of participants was 191 students in two different classes.The research methods included questionnaires,interviews,tests,research journals,students’ learning diaries and classroom observations.Qualitative and quantitative analysis methods were used to analyze the collected data,the quantitative data were analyzed by SPSS 19.0 system.The research results show that students’ motivation for learning academic writing has been prominently increased with the assistance of online teaching and that the online task-based instruction afforded by CALL can distinctly enhance students’ learning autonomy.Additionally,Students’ academic writing proficiency has been significantly improved with the process of the teaching and training project.Finally,the implications and suggestions of this study are discussed and it is expected to be beneficial for teacher’s instruction and students’ study in the further second language acquisition research.