Enhancing Writing Skills via Mobile Learning and Wikis

Abstract

This chapter reports on how a group of advanced EFL students in a private language school in Spain employed their smartphones and wikis to create a learning environment outside their classroom context to enhance their writing skills. Twenty-one participants of C1 level downloaded the Google application on their smartphones with a view to performing their reading and vocabulary tasks prior to writing their essays on a wiki learning platform, with subsequent peer editing and feedback. The findings suggest that the participants' general overview of this novel learning experience was positive and that collaborative work on the wiki fostered negotiation of meaning and sharing knowledge, which can benefit the writing process. The smartphone was deemed a convenient tool for reading and completing vocabulary exercises as its portability permits ubiquitous learning. Peer editing and feedback are crucial for developing linguistic proficiency, thereby improving writing skills.