Improving My Students' Writing Skill: An Intensive Course for ESL Learners by Using Process-Approach to Writing with the Assistance of Computer Word Processor

Abstract

This is a rapid and intensive course devoted to improve the struggling students’ writing skill at Sur University College in the Sultanate of Oman. It follows the Process-Approach to writing with the assistance of computer word processing program. In the sense, dealing with writing as a step-by-step process. Word processing was mainly used in the revision phase. It made the revision process easier. This course is highly relevant to ESL/EFL learners. It’s really organized after we realized that the students were hesitated, shy and frustrated when they were required to write in English. It is an interactive and integrated course in which the learners, in addition to writing, were supposed to master some vocabulary as well as grammatical rules. The main objective of the course is to motivate the learners not only to copy but to be creative and confident when tackling the writing craft. In achieving our objective, we wanted to show how computer can be a useful writing tool to improve students’ writing skills. It’s a challenge in which the learners were needed to work on generating ideas, organization and mechanism. We were determined to orient the students to use the computer word processing program with the perspective that confidently they will enjoy this experience. Therefore, they got the opportunity to practice and edit their writing in order to improve grammar, spelling and punctuation.