THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS ON THE ENGLISH WRITING PROCESS FOR THAI LEARNERS

Abstract

The research aim was to examine the impact of technological tools on the English writing process for Thai learners, focusing on the processes of pre-writing, while-writing, and post-writing. The target group was 150 Thai undergraduate students in the Business English program at a government university in southern Thailand. The research tool was a questionnaire consisting of close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Data was collected quantitatively and analyzed into means, standard deviations, and percentages. The findings indicated that most students agreed that using technology tools could help them write English better: pre-writing ( = 4.04, S.D. = 0.80), especially it helped them manage data and plan writing; while-writing ( = 3.99, S.D. = 0.87), it helped them access information to improve and compose content; after writing ( = 4.03, S.D. = 0.80), it helped them improve and correct the language sentence and vocabulary patterns, including analytical thinking and creating quality of work. The most popular writing tool was Grammarly (50%), which helped in improving writing, followed by Google Translate (30%), which helped in translation, and finally, ChatGPT (20%), which helped in improving sentence structure and vocabulary. This showed that most of the students agreed that integrating technology into the writing process had a positive effect on improving language skills, quality of work, learning with others, building confidence, easy access to information, and saving time when starting to write. On the other hand, depending too much on technology could decrease critical thinking skills, reduce creativity, give incomplete content, and disturb the writer’s concentration.