Effects of IT-Supported Instruction on Essay Writing Performance and Attitude among Senior Secondary School Students in Nigeria

This study examined the effects of IT-supported instruction on essay writing performance and attitudes of Senior Secondary School (SSS II) students in Nigeria. A quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design complemented with a descriptive survey approach was adopted. Participants were selected from secondary schools in the South-South, South-West, and North Central geopolitical zones and assigned to either an IT-supported instructional group or a conventional teaching control group. Data were collected using the Essay Writing Performance Test (EWPT) and the Essay Writing Attitude Scale for Secondary School Students (EWASSBS), both of which demonstrated acceptable reliability coefficients of 0.80 and 0.85, respectively. Students’ reading interest and access to reading materials were assessed descriptively to provide contextual background information and were not treated as experimental or predictive variables. Descriptive results showed variation in students’ reading interest and ownership of novels. The inferential statistics revealed that despite the fact that all instructional approaches resulted in the improvement of the post-test scores, the IT-supported instructional approach was efficient in improving not only the writing proficiency but also student attitudes. These results imply that the combination of the digital writing tools is the most effective way to optimize the learning results. The paper suggests that IT-based pedagogies should be adopted in order to make Nigerian secondary learners adopt a strong writing culture.