Unveiling the blended learning factors that affect English as a foreign language learning students’ writing

• Blended learning (BL) affects EFL students’ writing competences quite equally in terms of task fulfillment, organization, vocabulary, and grammar. • EFL students’ behaviours are the direct predictors of their writing competences. • EFL students’ behaviours are subject to the influences of the BL environment and their personal factors. • The environment impacts their writing competences more than their personal factors do. While numerous studies targeted the effects of blended learning (BL) on English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ written products, a study to determine the mechanism of what factors in the BL environment impact EFL writing performance is under-researched. In response, the authors drew on Bandura’s triadic reciprocal determinism and Venkatesh et al.’s unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to navigate the hypothesized research model in an exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The sample included six participants in the initial qualitative phase and 148 respondents in the later quantitative phase. The findings based on the statistical analysis of measurement and structural models indicate that BL improves students’ global aspects of writing (task fulfillment, organization) more than their local matters (vocabulary, grammar). In the BL environment, environmental factors and students’ personal factors significantly influence their behaviors, which powerfully predict their writing performance. In the indirect relation, writing performance is impacted almost equally by the BL environmental factors and students’ personal factors. The study suggests some conclusions on the roles of individual, environmental, and behavioral factors in affecting writing performance and implications for promoting the BL prospect in the EFL writing context.