Pen Pals Are Now in Your Finger Tips— A Global Collaboration Online Project to Develop Writing Skills

Many Malaysian students have an aversion towards writing. This study explores the potential of using an online material entitled, PenPal Schools, in the English as Second Language (ESL) classroom to develop writing skill with peers around the world via an online collaborative project. A research was carried out to provide insights into the aspects of PenPal Schools that are useful in developing writing skills and to find out the potential of this material as a teaching and learning tool in writing lessons. Thirty 12-year-old primary school students from Cheras, Selangor were chosen as the participants based on their March 2018 school based assessment writing results together with May 2018 school based midterm writing results to avoid any biasness. After the March test, they were required to join PenPal Schools and take part in the online collaborative project. The research used mixed-method design where quantitative data from pre- and post-tests and responses from semi-structured interviews were used to measure the outcome. The post test result reflected the improvement in their writing skill and it hadfound out that this educational website could make the writing lessons become more interesting as they could communicate and learn with peers around the world, particularly native speakers. This positive engagement in a dynamic and collaborative classroom is hoped to shed new light on the era of 4.0 education.