THE USE OF DISTANCE LEARNING PLATFORMS IN TEACHING WRITING ONLINE

Abstract

The work outlines the challenges educators face while teaching writing online and finds out ways to overcome them. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review available e-learning platforms used to facilitate foreign language teaching process in general and teaching wiring in particular, analyze opportunities it gives, the applicability of online tools, demonstrate how to combine them with onsite teaching. The author reflects on the possibility of the use online learning environments in post-pandemic time. This works also analyzes pre-lesson activities and their use while online and onsite work, substantiates pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing activities and how beneficial they are to ESL students in learning English. The article reviews the possibilities provided by Moodle and Google Workspace distance learning courses on the basis of “Sikorsky” Distance Learning Platform supplemented with other online learning services for teaching writing skills. The implementation of e-learning at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute demonstrated that it enables and facilitates interaction between educators and students, the university has developed and advanced huge amount of activities and materials supplementing course materials aimed at teaching writing skills as well as other language skills. The peculiarities of synchronous and asynchronous teaching of writing skills are studied in the article. The results show the effectiveness of combination of online and traditional tools of teaching writing and the potential of distance learning platforms. The results of the study show that one of the main benefits of teaching writing online is the ability to adjust learning process to students’ individual needs and learning style. Thus, online learning will eventually become an integral component of teaching which will lead to the emergence of a new hybrid model of education.