A preliminary study on flipping an English as a foreign language collaborative writing course with video clips: Its impact on writing skills and writing motivation

Background: Although conventional writing procedures are still the dominant instructional procedures in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, instructors are still struggling with time limitations to improve EFL students writing skills properly. Additionally, EFL students are not engaged in the writing process since they lack the required information about the writing tasks. Objectives: The present study, therefore, applied a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of a flipped writing classroom on EFL students' writing skills (i.e. writing content, writing organization, and language use) and writing motivation on the one hand and possibly recommend a better instructional procedure for students' writing skills and writing motivation in EFL context on the other hand. Methods: To this aim, two intact classes were selected as the participants of the study. The two classes were randomly assigned to a flipped classroom with 27 EFL students and a non-flipped classroom with 24 EFL students. The non-flipped classroom was instructed through conventional writing instruction over 16 sessions whereas the flipped classroom was taught with the same content in a flipped writing mode in 10 sessions. Two timed writing tasks, a writing motivation scale, and an individual semi-structured interview were used to gather the required data. Results and Conclusions: The findings indicated that the flipped writing classroom outperformed the non-flipped writing classroom in improving the EFL students' writing performance, writing organization, language use, and writing motivation; however, no significant differences were found between the two groups' writing content. Moreover, the data analysis from the individual semi-structured interview indicated that the flipped students had positive attitudes and perceptions towards the flipped writing classroom which further supported the quantitative findings. Implications: Practical implications for collaborative writing instruction using video clips and other electronic materials are suggested.