Wordling my writing: Practices and perceptions

This paper is aimed to explore and use Wordle: data visualization tool as a facilitating teaching tool in EFL writing class. Wordle has been employed to carry out this action research project on English as Foreign Language (EFL) writing at the Language Centre of Sultan Qaboos University. It was used to generate word cloud analyses to discuss students' writing progress, strategies and lexical acquisition. Here in this study, the researcher positively postulated that Wordle is a very effective teaching tool in the writing class and that the incorporation of this technology medium in the composition class would enhance EFL students' writing and vocabulary skills. By conducting this project, electronic compositions, multiple drafts of students' writing were obtained over a course of one semester. The writing tasks covered certain rhetorical functions instructed over two blocks: four months in the Fall academic semester of the year 2014, including Cause and Effect, Compare and Contrast, and Opinion Essay. These students were freshmen doing their English writing course on the Foundation Programme they are placed on once they were admitted to the Sultan Qaboos University. The study also discussed other potential ways to use Wordle in the classroom as a smart learning component and concluded with some classroom implications and recommendations about using Wordle software in the EFL writing class. Key words. Visualization tool, Wordle, Word cloud, composition, vocabulary acquisition.