The Effects of the Use of Language Tool in the Performance of the Academic Writing Skill
摘要
Rapid advances in technology require teachers to adapt to new teaching methods. An effective solution is to use web tools. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of writing tools and to improve the writing skills of B1 students in the Centro de Idiomas of the Technical University of Ambato. The applied research methodology was pre-tested with a quantitative approach. The main research instrument consisted of the written part of the Cambridge Preliminary English Test (PET). PET examination was used for pre-test and post-test for data collection. Data were collected from a sample of eight students, eleven males and fourteen females. In addition, test results were assessed using the Cambridge Rubric, which assesses four criteria: content, communication skills, organization and language. Each criterion was rated on a scale from 1 to 5. In the pre-experimental phase, a total of four interventions were conducted over four weeks, focusing on activities to improve writing skills using the Language web tool. During this intervention, students were asked to write paragraphs based on the topics covered in the PET test. The writing process consists of three stages: before writing, during writing and after writing, with feedback provided by the web tool and the teacher. Data collected through these interventions were analyzed using IBM SPSS statistical software. The main results show that writing skills improved significantly after the intervention.