The impact of digital creative writing on academic writing achievement and motivation at tertiary level

Writing skills have always been challenging for teachers and students both in the native and foreign languages. Students worry about starting and organizing their ideas, whereas teachers have trouble motivating their students towards writing skills. When the quality of the written product is not at the desired level, students feel anxious which is one of the biggest problems in the writing process. To overcome challenges and be more beneficial to learners in this process, innovative and promising methods should be integrated into the writing curriculum. It is globally accepted that technology has a significant influence and becomes omnipresent in every process of our lives. As technology advances, it has made an immense breakthrough in communication and the education system. It has provided an opportunity to gain individual experiences of informal language acquisition in a virtual environment and promote learner autonomy that increases learners' motivation and leads them to become lifelong learners. Thus, this experimental study investigates the evaluation of B2 level creative writing ability based upon using web 2.0 tools on a digital platform. The study aims to identify and explore the effect of digital creative writing on English Preparatory School students' writing skills, attitudes, and expectations towards writing. The study took place at a foundation university, the School of Foreign Languages in Turkey. 66 students in the B2 level participated in this research. Two groups that were equivalent to each other were chosen as experimental and control groups. Data were collected through final writing skills quizzes, the adaptation of the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test to Turkish developed by Özbay and Zorbaz (2011), pre-test and post-test, creative writing rubric developed by the researcher. After obtaining data from participants who attended the study, attitudes, expectations, motivation, and writing proficiency were analyzed. The results indicated that digital creative writing not only improved academic writing achievement but also helped increase the writing motivation of the students. Finally, after attaining findings and results, some pedagogical recommendations were given for target groups. Key Words: Creativity, Creative Writing, Educational Technologies, Writing Apprehension