Blending with purpose: Teachinh writing courses with online and traditional classroom instruction

The aims of this study are to find whether blended learning would make a difference at the writing scores of students compared to traditional face-to-face education and to establish the students' perspective on the usage of technology at writing courses with quantitative and qualitative research methods. For the purpose of the study, one experimental and control groups were chosen from the School of Foreign Languages, Gaziantep University. The 13 students in the experimental groups are taught writing with blended learning while 13 students are taught writing with traditional face-to-face education during one month. The students at both groups have the same schedule, age, English level and classroom facilities. The results of analysis done by SPSS show that the writing scores of the experimental group are higher than the writing scored of the control group. To learn the students' perspectives at the experimental group, semi-structured interviews have been done after the experience. The results show that the students are not satisfied the usage of current technology at writing courses. On the other hand, they reported they were satisfied with blended learning. The students also gave some suggestions about the implications of technology in and outside of the classes.