Effect of Digital Writing Workshop Activities on Writing Motivation and Development of Story Writing Skills

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of digital writing workshop activities on fourth grade primary students’ story writing skills and writing motivation. The study was carried out in Ankara province during the 2017-2018 academic year. A true experimental design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study. The study group of the research consisted of a total of 30 students (15 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group) studying in the fourth grade of primary school. The Motivation to Write Scale, the Story Elements Evaluation Scale, and the 6+1 Analytical Writing and Evaluation Scale were used as data collection tools for the study. The experimental implementation process lasted 14 weeks. During the implementation, students were asked to write stories using a different digital platform at each stage of the writing process. In the study, t-test for independent groups and ANOVA test were used for the data analysis. The SPSS software program was used for analysis of the data. The findings obtained in the study reveal that with regard to the use of story elements by students who participated in the digital writing workshop implementation and in the dimensions of ideas, organisation, word choice, sentence fluency and spelling in their stories, there was a significant difference in favour of the experimental group. This situation reveals that the digital writing workshop implementation was effective for the improvement of the students’ story writing skills. However, it was determined that there was a significant decrease in the writing motivation scores of the experimental group students who participated in the digital writing workshop, whereas there was no significant change in the writing motivation scores of the students in the control group. This situation reveals that, contrary to expectations, the digital writing workshop activities decreased the students’ writing motivation.