English as a Foreign Language Student Experiences of In-Class and Online Writing Courses

Abstract

Online teaching especially in the Covid-19 pandemic era was made a must. Education institutions shifted from face to face to online instruction. This shift raises the question to which type of writing instruction is preferred by English as a foreign language (EFL) students. Taking this into account, this study sort to reveal the perspectives of university students majoring in the English language teaching (ELT) department in a private university in North Cyprus with regard to their experiences of writing courses designed both in-class and online. During the online implementation of the course, the students were engaged in UZEBIM: a Moodle designed by the institution. To be able to achieve the aim of the study a qualitative research design was employed. Two semesters were allocated in which the first was taught face to face and the second online. Both courses employed the same methodology to teach writing. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were administered to 17 participants after the online implementation of the writing course. It was made evident from the results of the study that the majority of the students preferred online writing courses to in-class (face to face). The reasons behind their choices could be attributed to the students’ motivation, working in their own time and pace, and having illegible hand writing.