Discuss The Advantages And Disadvantages Of ICT In Teaching Writing

One of the advantages of using ICT in teaching writing skills that the authors point out is students’ attention can be drawn when ICT is being used as a teaching tool to make the lesson more attractive. Students can keep focused and will not feel bored during the lesson if the use of ICT is involved. This is supported by Parvin and Salam’s (2015) study which found that most of the teachers (79%) stated that when they use e-content during the lesson, their students were more attentive and focused. Another advantage pointed out by the author is the use of ICT in teaching writing encourages active learning. This is because current generation of students are all digital natives and they even use ICT tools outside the school such as smartphone and laptop. Students become active in Internet-based teaching of writing because they can search for online information to support their writings (Cahyono & Mutiaraningrum, 2016). They can participate actively as an individual when they post their writings and

One of them is the improper use of short forms in writing as in the short messaging system (SMS). Students tend to use a lot of short forms such as “cos” to mean “because” in their writing because those short forms are familiar to be used in the Internet. They are influenced by such Internet language on many social networking sites and thus apply it in their writing tasks. Although the students are aware of the improper use of short forms in their writing tasks, they cannot avoid it because they use them uncautiously (Ochonogor, Alakpodia & Achugbue, 2012). Apart from that, students also tend to ignore their online writing tasks as compared to hard copy tasks. This is because it is hard to guide and monitor all students in an online platform. Students might also be distracted by visiting other irrelevant websites when they are asked to do a particular task