Analyzing the Influence of Communicative Language Teaching on Functional Writing Skills: Moderating Role of Information and Communication Technology

Abstract

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is essential for developing students' communicative and functional writing skills. In this age of information and communication technologies, students must be proficient in functional writing to communicate effectively through emails, articles, manuscripts, and academic tasks. Thus, this study analyzed the influence of communicative language teaching on functional writing skills and the moderating role of information and communication teaching. The study was a mixed-method research. There were two objectives such as (a) to explore English teachers' perspectives on the influence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) on functional writing skills and (d) to analyze teachers' perceptions toward the moderating role of information and communication technology in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) for functional writing skills. All the public secondary school English teachers in the Jhelum, Punjab, Pakistan district were the population. A sample of 200 teachers was selected for quantitative data through random sampling techniques. The researcher developed research instruments to collect quantitative through survey techniques. The developed instrument was validated, and its reliability was checked and found to be appropriate. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS (version 26). This study concluded that there was a positive but moderate correlation between Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and students' functional writing skills. The integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into CLT demonstrated a strong and significant correlation with students' functional writing skills, and the regression analysis indicated that ICT integration is a strong predictor of functional writing skills, with the model explaining 92.9% of the variance (R=.964, and an R²=.929). These results highlight the essential role of ICT in enhancing functional writing skills when integrated effectively into CLT approaches. This research recommends that secondary educational institutions be motivated to integrate ICT tools into the CLT approach to improve students' functional writing of the secondary students.