A Gamification Program to Enhance Writing Skills of EFL Secondary Stage Students and their Motivation towards Learning these Skills

Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of using a gamification program to develop first secondary stage students’ EFL writing skills and increase their motivation towards learning writing. Participants of the study were two groups of first year secondary students at Salem Madian Official Language School (one experimental and one control). Instruments of the study were an EFL writing test and a motivation scale towards learning writing skills. Validity and reliability of the instruments were calculated and found to be relatively reasonable, then the pre-test and scale were administered to both groups. Homogeneity was established between the two groups. After that, the experimental group was taught based on the gamification program and the control group received regular instruction. Post-test and scale were administered to both groups after the program has been applied. A t-test was used to compare the mean scores of students on the pre-and the post application of the instruments. Eta Square was also used to determine the effect size of the treatment program. Results showed that experimental group outperformed the control group. This indicated that the treatment program had a good impact on developing EFL writing skills and increased the motivation of the participating students. Therefore, it is concluded that using gamification is effective in developing EFL writing skills for secondary stage students and increase their motivation towards learning writing.
Key words: Gamification- EFL Writing Skills –Motivation