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Writing is a challenging and complex skill to build, let alone academic writing (Sermsook et al., 2017). Such skill is generally founded upon four elements: the cognitive (related to the linguistic competence), the meta-cognitive (involved with the awareness of the writer of the aim, the audience, and the style of writing), the social element (constituting communication and interaction with peers and target audience), and the affective element (responsible for feelings expressions and ideas) (Al Harby & Troudi, 2020). Indeed, feedback is most valuable when it is timely, personalized, focused on the individual needs of the learner, and caring for his/her feelings. As such, teachers should provide daily and meaningful narrative feedback to students, evaluate them through a conversation, and raise their awareness for self-monitoring during the writing process (Cahyono & Amrina, 2016). Consequently, the student will end up being more engaged in the writing process (Sanat & Slimani, 2017; Al Harby & Troudi, 2020).
Moreover, when compared to native language speakers, applying the writing competencies, English Foreign Language (EFL) students are at a disadvantage since they attempt to connect both the writing skills acquisition along with foreign language competencies. For EFL learners, writing is considered a difficult task since they get few chances to write in English (Sermsook et al., 2017). For instance, studies show that EFL students in the Arab World struggle when producing academic writing as they face problems organizing and coherently producing ideas (Alkubaidi, 2014). Therefore, the feedback process becomes a task that needs to be planned and organized with the utmost care, particularly in an EFL context where it is difficult for students to be independent in controlling the quality of their writing (Cahyono & Amrina, 2016). Although written corrective feedback is an essential factor, some EFL writing classes do not use it (Ahmed & Abouabdelkader, 2018). In a study measuring the effectiveness of written feedback on Omani students, a high potential for improvement was detected (Al Ajmi, 2015). Even though teachers’ feedback is highly efficient for the improvement of students’ learning, it remains a demanding and time-consuming task for already overwhelmed teachers. That is why the integration of educational technologies with the provision of feedback would help in generating instantaneous feedback and facilitating students' learning while increasing their engagement (Azmi et al., 2019; Hojeij & Baroudi, 2018).
At present, little is known about current trends in electronic feedback in an Arabic EFL context (Hojeij & Baroudi, 2018). Additionally, students’ perceptions of technology used to monitor and review their writing have not been investigated thoroughly enough in this context. Therefore, this exploratory paper presents an approach to give effective feedback aimed at improving students' writing skills using digital tools. In this study, EFL teachers created a digital screen recording feedback tool to deliver personalized oral feedback to students to improve their writing skills. The participant teachers prepared a digital material folder that consisted of images, documents, worksheets, explanations, and lists of articles to read, and incorporated relevant material to the screen recording to provide students with learning opportunities and personalized feedback. With the use of personalized e-feedback, the aim of this approach is two-fold: 1) to raise students’ responsibility in revising and editing their academic writing, and 2) to put students at the center of the learning process and increase their engagement by providing them with self-paced digital feedback videos.
The literature demonstrates how the development of students’ writing skills is affected by feedback impact and procedure. Thus, the need for further investigation into the effectiveness of ubiquitous learning, exclusively in the context of digital feedback, has become significantly important for educational practices.