EFL in Synchronous Online Classes | Page 20

13 2.3 Summary As a result of the prior analytical reading; there are various studies that emphasize and illustrate the importance of distance learning and its effectiveness on the outcome of the learners’ motivation, engagement and communication skills. However, there are limited studies that discuss the positive impact of distance learning can have on students’ writing skill and how it can be used as a tool to enhance their writing through the use of different modern technologies in a virtual classroom. The clear objective of this literature review is to analyze and synthesize scholarly articles that examine and argue the effectiveness of distance learning on the engagement, motivation, as well as language and communication skills of Chinese learners that face some challenges in regard to learning English as a foreign language and the conditions that must be fulfilled for an effective virtual lesson. In light of this, the findings of this literature review suggest that distance learning could be used as a very powerful tool to enhance the learning experience for these learners by providing them with a ‘scaffolded motivational adaptation of their material’ for the purpose of having them become more engaged in class since they are easily exposed to the content of the material through CLT and uncomplicated task-based instruction activities inside of classroom which could improve their knowledge, collaborative skills as well as their language and communication skills by interacting more often with the teacher. Further, the second chapter of the literature review has concluded with a discussion on the difficulties that learners face while writing in terms of ‘mechanical and grammatical errors’, which later on justifies that learners of all levels can overcome these writing barriers through entertaining