Iranian EFL Instructors' Integration of Educational Technology to Teach Argumentative Writing: Types, Perceptions, and Barriers

Argumentative writing is a form of writing which is essential and challenging for university students since they should be able to state their insights in academically appropriate ways. They face challenges in applying these formats. Hence, the present study intends to investigate Iranian EFL instructors' integration of educational technology to teach argumentative writing within the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Moreover, this study seeks to assess the types of educational technology university instructors engaged in their writing class and explores the problems hindering the application of instructional technology within an EFL context. The use of instructional technology in this study defines an integration of email, the Internet, blog, electronic journal, e Power Point, Wiki, adobe connect, web search, and podcasts to perform their writing class activities. A descriptive qualitative design was employed, and the data was collected through structured interviews. Twenty EFL instructors teaching English both at the department of English in some universities and at advanced levels in some institutes in Shiraz took part in this study. Convenient sampling was utilized in the current study. The researchers used content analysis method for analyzing the qualitative part of the study. The findings revealed that educational technology could be considered a complementary factor to facilitate both teachers' as well as learners' practices in the process of teaching and learning argumentative writing. Moreover, participants reported that they mostly employed internet and web search, email, and podcast in their writing class. Besides, lack of accessibility and training were the most problematic barriers to integrating educational technology to teach argumentative writing.