Students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in a university writing course

The flipped classroom teaching model has been adopted in university-level language teaching for many years due to its advantages of improving students’ performance, enhancing their engagement and fostering autonomous learning among students (e.g. Hung, 2015; Kvashnina & Martynko, 2016). Research findings suggest that flipped learning is most effective for “intermediate to above-intermediate proficiency learners where the learning outcome is skill-based and procedural (e.g. writing)” (Vitta & AI-Hoorie, 2023, p. 1285). In this study, a large group of first-year undergraduate students were assigned two pre-class flipped videos and two accompanying worksheets to prepare for in- class discussions in a 13-week writing course. At the end of the course, they were invited to evaluate the effectiveness of the videos and the worksheets in the course evaluation questionnaire. The results revealed that the flipped classroom was very well received. For example, over 80% of the students (n=415) found the videos useful, helping them understand the key elements of a thesis statement and a topic sentence as well as paragraph coherence and cohesion, which, in turn, enabled them to effectively write clear thesis statements and topic sentences. Likewise, over four fifths of the students (approximately 82%, n=418) acknowledged that the two worksheets enhanced their proficiency in writing thesis statements and topic sentences, as well as in identifying common errors related to paragraph coherence and cohesion. In the presentation, the authors will discuss the design considerations involved in developing the videos and the in-class discussion worksheets and conclude by highlighting the pedagogical implications and practical issues related to the implementation of the flipped classroom.