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English is an essential communication tool in Malaysia. Malaysian students learn English as a second language (Gill, 2002). According to The Malaysia Government Official Portal (2012), most Malaysians attend eleven years of schooling with English being taught as one of the compulsory subjects. However, even after many years of learning English, Malaysians still lack proficiency in English (Jalaludin, Mat Awal & Abu Bakar, 2008). In general, they have difficulties writing and communicating in English. As a consequence, there is a high unemployment rate among Malaysian graduates (Ting et al, 2017). Despite the fact that the authorities concerned have detailed plans on what the pupils should achieve by the end of primary schooling, their writing performance is not up to par. In line with that, Nesamalar, Saratha and Teh (2001) emphasised that Malaysian students lack writing skills. To go into greater details, Ghabool, Mariadass and Kashef (2012) revealed that English as Second Language (ESL) students in Malaysia have issues with poor language and punctuation use in writing. Moreover, Yusuf, Jusoh & Yunisrina (2019) stated that as writing is often seen as the most challenging task for ESL students, many of them have negative perceptions and attitudes towards English writing. They are trapped in a vicious circle of having low motivation due to the challenges of writing and finding themselves struggling even more when they are required to write. In short, the main reasons for students’ lack of English proficiency include first language interference and motivation issues in writing classes (Heather, 2018).
For a matter of fact, students’ self-motivation in a writing class is the key element to the success of the lesson. Also, self-motivation plays an important role in enhancing a student’s academic performance (Kew, et al., 2018). In an ESL class, students' motivation and writing performances are greatly influenced by .a teacher’s approach. According to Melor and Chan (2016), students’ motivation is affected by the teaching approach utilised by teachers, the types of feedbacks received, the types of writing activities done in the classrooms and the frequency of writing practices. Their motivation plummets when a less effective teaching approach is used and when they have limited opportunities to practise writing. Berk (2009), on the other hand, claimed that traditional classroom settings demotivate and disconnect the learning process from students. That said, with the aid of technology and new pedagogies, ESL students’ writing performance and motivation can be improved (Fidaoui, Bahous, & Bacha, 2010). In this respect, Zainudin and Perera (2019) highlighted that the flipped classroom approach is able to improve students’ motivation. Not only that, Umutlu & Akpinar (2020) proved that the same approach enhances students’ writing performance by using the flipped classroom approach, teachers utilise different methods and approaches when teaching writing skills and this leads to better understanding and learning among the students (Chow, 2007; Graham, 2007; Kong, 2005).