ICT multimedia learning affordances: role and impact on ESL learners' writing accuracy development

Abstract

This work examined the role and impact of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools such as YouTube as an open educational resource-cum-tool with respect to its affordances of captions and their adjustable settings like font size and color (i.e., enhanced captions of videos); these affordances were proposed for their multimedia learning effects for the development of ESL learners' writing accuracy. This work hypothesized that the frequent use of these affordances as a technique can create and enhance a multimedia learning environment which can in its turn help learners focus more on the (new) target language input, be more able to notice their errors and correct them by way of conscious comparisons between their own output and target language input. In effect, their L2 writing becomes more accurate over time. This work investigated the role and impact of these YouTube affordances on the development of ESL writing accuracy through exploring the learners' personal experience with and actual use of these affordances for the development of ESL writing accuracy over five months. Moreover, it sought to determine whether or not learners' L2 writing accuracy improved after the implementation of the proposed YouTube affordances for ESL writing improvement. Furthermore, it explored the correlation between the development of learners' L2 writing accuracy, if any, and the impact of these YouTube affordances on the development of ESL writing accuracy. The findings of this study revealed that the frequent use of ICT multimedia tools like YouTube with respect to its affordances of captions and their adjustable settings like font size and color (i.e., enhanced captions of videos) played a positive role that impacted the improvement of learners' English writing accuracy over five months. Also, the findings demonstrated that participants' L2 writing accuracy (as indicated by all the metrics used in this study for measuring the learners' writing accuracy progress) developed significantly after five months of the implementation of the proposed YouTube affordances of enhanced captions as a technique for the development of ESL writing. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant evidence, although ethically speaking this evidence was not conclusive as it was limited by the small sample size of this group of participants and thus the elicited and analyzed data, which suggested that there was a strong correlation between the development of learners' L2 writing accuracy and the frequent use of the proposed YouTube affordances of enhanced captions for the development of ESL writing accuracy. It was concluded that ICT tools such as YouTube with respect to its affordances of captions and their adjustable settings like font size and color (i.e., enhanced captions of videos) can be effectively used and recommended as a technique for the development of learners' L2 writing accuracy due to their positive and enhancing multimedia learning effects.