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Among the four core language skills, writing is often regarded as the most difficult and complex because it requires the application of multiple aspects of language, such as vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure (Hyland, 2003a). Differences in both the linguistic and cultural features of the native language and English make writing in English difficult and so does the complicated mental processes engaged in writing (Brown & Lee, 2016; Harklau, 2002). Because of its difficulty, writing is more frequently neglected than other language skills; for students and teachers, writing requires more time to produce and to grade, respectively (Kao, 2009; Kao & Yang, 2011). This lack of emphasis on writing education is also evident in the Taiwanese secondary education system having a bias toward reading due to Taiwanese language education being examination-oriented (Yu, 2019). Compared with reading, fewer practice hours are provided for developing English writing skills. This results in students having limited writing proficiency, which is reflected in their English writing performance on Taiwanese college entrance exams (Liao, 2006). Students’ English writing abilities are even poorer in Taiwanese higher education because students have fewer opportunities to complete academic tasks in English (Reynolds, 2015). Thus, teachers must develop effective approaches for improving students’ English writing skills.
In essay writing, descriptive essays require writers to describe objects, people, places, experiences, emotions, and situations; this form of writing, which is often used in other genres of essay writing, is the most basic form (McCarthy, 1998). English as a foreign language (EFL) students typically learn this form of writing when they first begin learning English writing (Carter, 2015). However, students’ abilities to compose descriptive essays are often low (Inayanti & Halimi, 2019).
Because the acquisition of writing skills is difficult for students, effective approaches to teaching writing must be explored. As discussed in Reynolds and Anderson (2015), one of the key elements in students developing EFL writing skills is interaction among students and between students and teachers. One approach to communicative language teaching that emphasizes interaction is task-based language teaching (TBLT), which enables students to practice the target language through an authentic task with guidance (Ellis, 2003). TBLT has been implemented in language education for more than 30 years. In the modern digital era, TBLT has been integrated with technology for implementation in education (Pierson, 2015); this has improved foreign language learning by, for example, alleviating students’ fear of failure and increasing their motivation (González-Lloret, 2014). However, the focus of research remains the effective and proper integration of new technologies into EFL writing tasks.
Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a technology-mediated task, the Online Video Exchange Project (OVEP), in improving first-year university students’ EFL descriptive writing skills and to evaluate the students’ responses to the project. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted. First-year university students from two English writing classes were recruited and were randomly assigned to the control group (CG), which received lecture-based instruction, or the experimental group (EG), which participated in the OVEP. This study was guided by the following research questions:
- 1.
Is there any statistically significant difference between the EG and CG English descriptive writing performances, as measured by the writing pretest and posttest, before and after participating in the OVEP?
- 2.
How would the EG students perceive the OVEP?