Abstract:
The aim of this study was fourfold: (1) to investigate the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of Iranian Engineering students’ writing (2) to examine the effect of literature-based activities on the accuracy of their WhatsApp assisted writing (3) to determine whether their emotional intelligence (EI) increases through literature-based activities in a WhatsApp assisted setting and (4) to survey the effect of literature-based activities and the produced emotional intelligence on the complexity and lexical diversity of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing. In phase I, as students went through literature-based activities, no significant differences of accuracy were found; despite the fact that the mean difference and standard deviation scores were indicative of effective treatment, literature-based activities. In phase II, the results obtained from the analytic procedures of literature-based activities on the accuracy of students’ WhatsApp assisted writing showed that the experimental group showed higher accuracy of writing. In phase III, the result of emotional intelligence improvement was more remarkable in the WhatsApp assisted writing. Additionally, the WhatsApp assisted written productions were significantly more diverse in using lexis, t-units and clauses but not other parameters of complexity. The results have some implications for teachers and researchers in the ESP setting.
Machine summary:
The Role of Literature-Based Activities and Emotional Intelligence in WhatsApp Assisted Writing of Iranian Engineering Students* Zhaleh Beheshti ** PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
Nonetheless, how social technology- supported collaborative activities can influence students’ emotional intelligence and their L2 writing performance in terms of accuracy, complexity and lexical diversity have received little attention and this study aimed to fill this gap.
Following foregoing studies of written texts (Dobao 2012; Goleman 1995; Wigglesworth & Storch 2009), emotional intelligence, accuracy, lexical diversity and syntactic complexity were measured and the data analysis was performed by using means, standard deviations and independent sample t-tests.
As the researchers found out the WhatsApp significant results of accuracy in the second phase of study, they decided to analyze WhatsApp assisted writing of those students who are exposed to literature based activities in terms of emotional intelligence, complexity and lexical diversity.
Discussion Overall, this study reinforces the idea that exposing students to literature-based activities via WhatsApp assisted writing leads to the development of students’ emotional intelligence and their L2 writing in terms of accuracy, lexical diversity but not complexity.
Referring to the second research question, the accuracy increase of WhatsApp written productions of ESP students who were exposed to literature-based activities can be tracked through the analysis of language-related episodes (LREs) aroused as a result of learners’ collaboration (Swain & Watanabe, 2012) in the WhatsApp community.