Impact of Blogs on Students Writing Abilities in EFL Classrooms

7/27/2019 Impact of Blogs on Students Writing Abilities in EFL Classrooms

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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE

TEACHING EFL CLASSROOMS

LUISA FERNANDA COBOS DUQUE

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS

DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS

BOGOT, 2012


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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE

TEACHING EFL CLASSROOMS

LUISA FERNANDA COBOS DUQUE

Code: 861046

Literature Review to apply for a Bachelors degree in English Philology

CLAUDIA LUCA ORDOEZ ORDOEZ

Advisor

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS

DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS

BOGOT, 2012


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TABLE OF CONTENT

IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING EFL

CLASSROOMS .......................................................................................................................... 4

Context ................................................................................................................................ 4

Communication and language learning .............................................................................. 6

Authenticity in language teaching: Web 2.0 applications .................................................. 7

Using blogs for authentic communicative writing: some benefits ..................................... 9

Learning communities and collaborative work ................................................................ 13

Peers correction in the writing process ............................................................................. 17

Other benefits and some disadvantages of blogging ........................................................ 20

How to implement blogs in EFL classrooms .................................................................... 22

Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 23

References ......................................................................................................................... 26


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IMPACT OF BLOGS ON STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE TEACHING EFL

CLASSROOMS

Context

Teaching English to non-English speaking students is very challenging, especially

in contexts like ours where the language being learned is not used in the society at large.

Usually, teachers limit their classes and the abilities of the learners to drill activities

focused just on one formal aspect of the language, or activities that place students in

simulated situations different from the ordinary practices of their culture. These frame

learners use of the language with no space for reflection about language form or how it can

be used to solve real problems (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989), making teaching and

learning a language an educational activity that is separated from the use of the language in

society. Fortunately in the last decades, technology has opened new opportunities for the

presentation of language to students and for the students to approach the language and its

practice, using the Internet, although there is not too much research that investigates how it

can be used pedagogically to develop language skills.

From my experience as language student, I have realized that, language classes can

become a repetition of nonsense words to many students because of two main reasons: a

large number of students per class and teachers lack of interest in using technology. Due to

the fact that teachers have classes with a large number of students, at least 32 according to

decree 3020 of the Ministerio de Educacin Nacional (2002), they usually have to deal with

different levels of knowledge in the same group, so it is hard to follow students progress in

the language. Another consequence of big classes is that teachers adopt the filling in


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grammar exercises as the best option for keeping so many students working, exercises that

are apart from any real application of the content studied during classes. On the other hand,

despite of the increasing use of the Internet in every aspect of students lives and the

growing concern in educational institutions for investing in information and

communication technologies (ICTs, from now on), specifically in computers, some teachers

are still not interested in looking for new, authentic ways to help students approach

language learning through online means. But online scenarios allow authentic

conversations and correspondence with native and non-native speakers in varied

communicative situations, so they can help students develop their communicative abilities,

influencing not only their performance in English but their attitudes and opinions towards

learning a foreign language. Blogs, for example, can do this through the development of

their writing abilities.

In this literature review I support this personal thesis, by reviewing theory and

research studies carried out in EFL contexts in which blogs have been implemented as part

of the students authentic use of the language in writing courses. First, I will refer to the

relation between communication and language learning, highlighting the importance of

authenticity in language education settings. Then, I will introduce Web 2.0 applications and

some of their benefits to describe how in a monolingual context like ours, they allow EFL

students to use the new language in real communication. After this, I will present the

definition of writing as a communicative ability and connect it to the definition of blogs,

exploring how they allow for authentic communicative writing. In doing this, I will

describe how blogs have been implemented in education and how their characteristics, like

asynchrony, are related to their benefits in language learning and teaching. Then, I will


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develop the concept of audience, basic to the communicative definition of writing, and how

students writing is affected by the sense of belonging to a writing community and

negotiating meaning, here I will also introduce collaborative writing and peer corrective

interactions from a constructivist perspective to describe more widely the possibilities that

blogs open for learners to improve their writing skills. I will then refer to other advantages

of the use of blogs in EFL classes, like the development of autonomy, and the improvement

of reading abilities. I will present positions against blogging as an effective way to develop

language abilities in EFL classes, providing a different view of them as language learning

tool through possible limitations and possible negative effects on the students learning

process according to some research studies. Finally, from them and their advantages, I will

draw some recommendations to implement blogs in EFL education settings based on some

research studies results that show what is important to consider.

Communication and language learning

When people speak in their mother tongue (L1), they do not only use an abstract

system of language composed by letters and sounds, words, and sentences. With that

system people actually express meaning, because they are always communicating with a

purpose in mind: describing something to someone, giving directions, apologizing,

discussing a point, persuading someone, asking for information and so on. Widdowson

(1978) points out that someone who is learning a language has to learn to do both and

makes the difference between usage and use. According to him, the first one refers to the

ability to compose correct sentences whereas language use refers to the speakers

understanding of context and their ability to choose the appropriate language in a real-life

situation.


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People who are learning a foreign language need to learn both the usage and the use

of language in communication. It is difficult, though, to provide students with authentic

opportunities for language use outside formal education environments. On one hand, there

may not be a real need for students to use the new language in daily communication, so

they may not be interested at all in learning another language. On the other hand, what

motivates and encourages the learning of a new language is social need and the pragmatic

demands of contextualized communication (Ninio & Snow, 1996 cited in Ordoez, 2011).

So, providing students with activities related to their contexts and interests can help them to

understand communicative phenomena or events they are familiar with. It can also help to

allow students to participate in decision-making about what to learn, what to do to learn,

and how to do it, in using the foreign language (Ordoez, 2011). This is supported by

Bransford, Vye, Kinzer and Risko (1990) and Littlewood (2000), who define authentic

communication as using language to communicate in situations where students themselves

have to solve a problem.

Authenticity in language teaching: Web 2.0 applications

Ideally an authentic language class should be taught in real-life locations and use

real-life practice. But as this is quite difficult in a monolingual context like ours, the

benefits of authentic interaction can be obtained nowadays in Web-based learning

environments. On-line applications give students access to communities of readers and

writers, where students use the foreign language in real communicative contexts and for

real communication purposes. These tools have been called Web 2.0, and according to

Reeves, Herrington and Oliver (2002), there are many advantages in using them to learn

and teach a foreign language. Students can, for example, collaborate with each other


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(Lebow & Wager, 1994), reflect on their self-learning (Young, 1993; Myers, 1993; Gordon,

1998), play different roles in communication (Bransford, Sherwood, Hasselbring, Kinzer &

Williams, 1990), polish products (Gordon, 1998; Barab, Squire, & Dueber, 2000), and have

access to multiple interpretations and outcomes of work(Duchastel, 1997).

Electronic interaction is defined as a threefold competence of communication,

construction and research (Shetzer &Warschauer, 2000). As Web 2.0-based applications

allow conversations, participation, and sharing in a social group, including them in

language teaching can lead teachers to two exploratory ways to use them. On one hand,

Calongne (2002) indicates that including Web 2.0 in teaching allows users not only to

search for information but to create new content; he also indicates that online group

interactions encourage those students who are not willing to talk in a traditional class to

contribute online. On the other hand, Hammond (2000) argues that e-learning settings offer

varied opportunities for informal and social sharing and they enable teachers and learners to

continually do reflective practice.

These characteristics of Web 2.0 tools make them ideal for communicative practice

of a language. In writing, for example, they allow for authentic writing with a purpose and

an audience in mind, a process that Widdowson (1978) has termed the actual writing

ability. According to this author, when someone is writing a text, he/she is not just

producing a sequence of sentences; instead, he/she is using those sentences to create

discourse, arranging different arguments to persuade the reader that he/she is offering

something worthy of reading. Writing with a purpose also implies a relation between writer

and reader from the beginning, since what is written depends on how the writer thinks that


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the text will be understood and interpreted by the reader. This is writing as ability, as

opposed to simply composing or arranging a set of related sentences (Widdowson, 1978).

Richards (1990) specifies this more saying that a written text is the product of a series of

complicated mental operations that require not only syntactic and lexical knowledge, but

also the capacity to create and organize ideas and thoughts in a way that can be effectively

conveyed to a potential reader. In this context, grammar and formal aspects of the language

should been considered important for creating a text but not the only features when

constructing meaning (Mitchell, 1996).

Using blogs for authentic communicative writing: some benefits

Many researchers have found blogs appropriate to implement in language teaching

and learning, especially in the teaching and learning of writing (Lantolf, 2000; Calongme,

2002; Lave & Wenger, 2005; Stephens & Collins, 2007; Dippold, 2009; Lee, 2009; Raith,

2006). Blogs have been defined as websites whose content is organized chronologically

from the most recent entry backwards and which are updated constantly, allowing readers

and writers to communicate to each other by leaving comments or suggestions on content,

expressing ones thoughts, or discussing ideas. Blood (2002) differentiates between two

types of blogs. The first one is journals, which function as electronic diaries in which

bloggers can share their thoughts and opinions, and the second one is the filter-style blog,

where users post links to other web content with commentary.

A more pedagogical classification of blogs is given by Campbell (2003, cited in

Nadzrah, 2009). His first type is called Tutor blog, in which the tutor creates and monitors a

blog to provide, for example, daily reading practice for students. It can include English web


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sites for students to explore, links for self-study, assigned tasks or course information. The

second type is called Learner blogs. These are student-run blogs, created either individually

or in a small collaborative group. The blog can function as a platform to express students

ideas through free writing or as a forum in which students can discuss their writing. The

third type is the Class blog, run by the entire class. It can be used as a discussion platform

for project-based language learning or as a free bulletin board where students can post any

information for others to read. It can also serve as a space for an international classroom

language exchange. Richardson (2006), in turn, analyzes blogging from a more general,

pedagogical perspective. According to him, blogs can be created depending on the purposes

that teachers or students could have in terms of class arrangement. For example, blogs can

function as class portals, as online filling cabinets, as e-portfolios, as collaborative spaces,

for knowledge management and articulation of the class, or as school websites.

When focusing on the improvement of writing abilities, researchers have found

many advantages of using blogs. According to Godwin-Jones (2006), writing on blogs

provides an environment in which students can develop skills of persuasion and

argumentation; offers opportunities for collaborative learning; encourages feedback and

allows both writing and reading activity; and stimulates debate, critical analysis and the

articulation of ideas and opinions. Other authors also support the use of blogs by saying

that they encourage critical thinking and respect towards the points of view of others, that

having an audience increases students language awareness and reflective writing, and that

blogs make it easier for teachers to track students performance (Bartlett-Bragg, 2003;

Dieu, 2004; Nardi, 2004; Miers, 2004; Ward, 2004; Huffaker, 2005; Richardson, 2005;

Raith, 2006; Blackstone, 2007; Quintero, 2008; Chu, 2009).


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In contrast, Wrede (2003) argued against blogging as a means of writing

improvement. In his opinion, technological communication advances such as instant

messaging and mobile phone texts are having a negative effect on literacy. It is also

supported by Hammersly (2003) who have found students use phrases like BTW (by the

way), cuz (because), and U (you) in submitted written work. Hammersly also mentioned in

his article the case of a student in Scotland who wrote her entire essay in mobile phone

texts expressions.

Besides all the advantages mentioned, blogs allow students to have asynchronous

interactions. That is to say, learners can write and publish their thoughts and opinions

without time or space constraints, thus placing critical thinking about the content over

posting work online (Oravec, 2003; Ducate & Lomicka, 2005; Richardson, 2005; Godwin-

Jones, 2006). In relation to this, Vurdien (2011) carried out a research during five months

with 11 EFL students in Spain who were preparing for the Certificate in Advance English

examination (CAE). Her study revealed that 7 of the students found the asynchronous

nature of blogs an asset. It allowed them to reread their own and their peers postings

without any space or time constraints, which provided them with the opportunity to reflect

not only on the content, but on new grammatical structures and new vocabulary. Sotillo

(2000) found the exact same results after qualitatively analyzing data collected from a study

with 25 adult students with different language backgrounds, in the US. In other words, in

the medium of asynchronous writing, the reflective aspect of composing can merge with the

interactive aspect of idea sharing in writing (Widdowson, 1978).


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Even if bloggers dont have an immediate answer from readers, they are writing

with a purpose and with an audience in mind (Hyland, 2002), meaning that blogging is a

process of sharing and negotiating meaning in which, if there is no audience, there will be

no reason to write a text. Having a real audience is what makes this kind of interaction

authentic for EFL students (Hedge, 2000). Traditionally, what students write does not mean

much to them, as it is not addressed to anyone else but the teacher. Choi (2008) indicates

that it is crucial for the students learning process that they are aware of the audience, but if

readers are only their teacher and peers and interaction purposes are only dictated by the

teacher, students writing will be shaped only by what teachers expect them to write.

However, when writing on a blog, the online audience is not only anticipated but

expected, and thus influences and structures the very manner in which the writer articulates,

composes, and distributes the self-document (Kitzmann, 2003). Similarly, Grabe and

Kaplan (1996) point out that the audience is essential to the generation of meaning.

According to them, the number of people expected to read the text, the extent to which the

readers are known or unknown, and differences of status, shared background knowledge,

and shared knowledge of the topic at hand in the audience influence the writer and his

writing.

The importance of audience in writing development is supported by several research

studies. Ward (2004) for example, introduced blogging as part of a L2 writing class for

non-native English speakers. After interviewing 40 students from the class, he concluded

that they were excited about writing again because the whole world was reading their words

and not just their writing teacher; this encouraged them to not only think about what they

said but also about how they said it. According to a survey, approximately two thirds of the


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class preferred writing on the blog to the more traditional written journal, and thirty three

(33) students told somebody else about their blogs; they really wanted to get people to read

what they had to say. Vurdien (2011) also found that 8 out 11 EFL students of hers had

benefited from blogs since, as they said, they had to think thoroughly about their own

views, concerning the issues before planning their task, choosing carefully the vocabulary

and grammatical structures they were going to use, deciding which the appropriate register

for each task was, and checking for spelling errors before posting their work.

Comparable results were obtained by Raith (2006), who had in a comparative study

carried out with 29 students of 9th grade, who studied English as a foreign language, in a

secondary girls school in Germany, part of his students writing a journal on a blog and the

others writing a journal on paper and contrasted both writing processes qualitatively. He

found out that 80% of the blog writers saw an influence of the audience on their writing,

but only 33, 3% of the paper journal writers did. Based on Littlewoods concept of

authentic communication (Littlewood, 2000), Raith concluded that students who worked

with paper journals wrote mostly summaries and reproduced content because they did not

try to negotiate meaning, whereas those who wrote online were actually constructing

meaning and interacting with their audience.

Learning communities and collaborative work

Because of the reader-writer interaction, Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that

having students use blogs is like having a community of practice (CoP), since what is

important is what students learn as a result of the interaction, what they do together, rather

than the final product. Besides, learners position themselves and their ideas within a social


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group, which contributes to establish their identity through discourse and facilitates the

writing process (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). They establish roles within the group, learn

from each other, and construct knowledge.

The word community comes from the words communicate and common,

indicating groups of people who share experiences and interests and who learn about their

interests (Mercer, 2003). According to Wenger (1998), some of the advantages that a CoP

offers are that students can evolve gradually because of their common interest in a

particular area, and that they also retain knowledge in a living way, since tasks respond to

local circumstances. In this way, students initiate themselves into real practice. Wenger

(1998) also states that when students work within a group, they start making things happen

for the whole community. In doing this, they work collaboratively: they distribute

responsibilities, discuss new ideas, and solve problems together. They also give feedback to

each other to achieve a specific goal and, as members of the community have a shared

understanding, they know what is relevant to communicate and how to present the

information in useful ways.

Several research studies based on a constructivist view of learning indicate that

learning communities are helpful to learners in sharing and constructing knowledge via

online interactions (Eldred, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Haneda, 1997; Feng, Lianghuan&

Long, 2000; Hyland, 2002; Downes, 2004; Nardi, 2004; Alm, 2006; Raith, 2006;

Blackstone, 2007; Mason &Rennie, 2007; Stephens & Collins, 2007; Lee, 2010). From the

Vygotskys socio-constructivist theory (1978), Fernndez (2012) argues that when learners

construct knowledge in collaboration with more capable individuals (experts), language


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becomes the semiotic tool that mediates learning. Given that students do not have the same

strengths or weaknesses, they can provide assistance to each other at different levels when

they work together, achieving a performance that is beyond their individual level of

competence (Ohta, 2001). According to Jones and Brader-Araje (2002), learning is the

process by which students construct meaning from past experiences in a social context. In a

classroom environment, students create their own meanings and develop ideas through

interaction with peers and teachers. The whole process of learning thus encourages students

to use language and new knowledge in different situations, including using language to

express themselves, to explain, to negotiate, and to compromise with peers while discussing

ideas.

According to Swain (2000, 2001), when learners share the responsibility for a

written product, they tend to collaborate in the solution of their language problems by

formulating and testing hypothesis, offering and assessing new input, or correcting

themselves or others. As a result, students develop cognitive tools to reflect on the foreign

language, discuss the language they are using in situations where they are focused on

meaning rather than form, and to solve problems related to its use. In addition, in blogs

students assume multiple roles in the writing process since when blogging they act as

writers who write and post, as readers and reviewers who respond to other writers posts

and as writer-readers who react to criticism of their own posts (Pinkman, 2005). When

using blogs, students publish their draft texts and receive comments from peers almost

instantly so they can collect the suggestions received, and organize them into a more

meaningful and well-structured new text (Fernndez, 2012).


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In recent years, a number of studies have drawn the attention of teachers to the

benefits of collaborative writing tasks, which require students to work in pairs throughout

the entire writing process (Storch, 2005; Storch & Wigglesworth, 2007; Wigglesworth &

Storch, 2009). Writing tasks completed in pairs offer learners an opportunity to collaborate

in the solution of their language-related problems, co-construct new language knowledge,

and produce linguistically more accurate written texts (Fernndez, 2012). Collaborative

dialogue is defined as the dialogue that occurs between students as they collaborate to solve

linguistic problems mediating L2 learning (Kim, 2008; Lapkin, Swain, & Smith, 2002;

Storch, 2002; Swain, Brooks, & Tocalli-Beller, 2002; Swain & Lapkin, 1998, 2002). In a

research study carried out in an Australian university, which included 23 students from

different origins (mostly Asians), Storch (2005) compared texts produced by individuals

and students working in pairs. She planned students writing process in three stages:

planning, writing and revision. According to her, the planning phase was spent on

generating preliminary ideas, reading, clarifying instructions, and deciding who would be

the scribe. And for the second stage, students spent some time on language deliberations

related to grammatical accuracy by offering alternative suggestions, feedback or

completing each others ideas.

Research into collaborative writing indicates that collaboration contributes to

increased complexity in students writing (Sotillo, 2000), produces higher quality ofwriting

(Storch, 2005) and can also be a source of student motivation (Kowal & Swain, 1994). In

her previous research, Storch (2005) found that students who worked in pairs wrote more

complex sentences than those who decided to work individually; besides, their texts tended

to be shorter but more accurate grammatically, and included clear highlighting statements


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in contrast to the ones wrote by individuals. Similar results were obtained by Ware (2004),

who carried out a study in a public university in the United States with 14 first year

students enrolled in a writing program. According to her, students who participate in web-

based writing reflect their comfort with technology, writing about past experiences,

interacting and receiving comments from their peers, and working together to achieve one

common goal. From the qualitative analysis of the data, Ware found out that some of the

students saw writing as a kind of debate with their peers, which influenced their writing

although students did not find a direct relation between what they wrote on-line and what

they handed in on paper.

Peers correction in the writing process

Nevertheless, not all research produces positive results when exploring the use of

blogs in writing development. Results from research studies on the effectiveness of peer

feedback on students writing vary notably, although some teachers have found students

feedback valuable in their language classes (Keh, 1990; Rothschild &Klingenberg, 1990;

Tsui& Ng, 2000). According to Dippold (2009), through blogging interaction students can

take advantage of having a different perspective on their performance and compare their

tasks to their peers. Also, Ware (2004) found that for some of her students, writing was a

space for sharing ideas with her peers in collaboration, but they felt they were competing,

since when they made their texts public, they became subject to criticism and evaluation.

Caulk (1994) highlighted a relative effectiveness of peer feedback when comparing her

comments as a writing teacher and those given by her students with an intermediate or

advanced level of English. She found that students comments tended to be more specific

and focused on grammar, whereas her suggestions were more general and took into


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consideration the whole text. Kamimura (2006) said that getting comments in depth

depends on students proficiency. According to her, highly proficient students tend to make

global and discourse-level comments, whereas the low-proficient students tended to

provide specific sentential comments and local revisions. Tsui and Ng (2000) add that

although teachers comments were more detailed than peer comments, the latter foster the

sense of an authentic audience contributing to raise students awareness of both strengths

and weaknesses in their own compositions.

Ideally, students feedback should contribute to the construction of a new revised

text; but instead, Mendona and Johnson (1994) pointed out that their advanced students

included peers suggestions selectively according to what they considered valid or not. This

is explained by Nelson and Murphy (1993) in terms of collaborative or defensive

interaction among students. According to them, when students work in a collaborative way

and have a good relationship, they are more likely to use their peers suggestions; but when

they do not interact at all or have a bad relationship, they are less likely to include

suggestions in their revisions. On the other hand, students may accept feedback from native

speakers more readily. Chen and Brown (2011) carried out a study in a university in the

U.S where students, received feedback from native speakers of the language. They found

that students had a positive reaction since they felt treated the same as any other speaker of

English. The students through that those comments encouraged them to be more reflective

on their errors so they would not repeat them in new tasks. Other studies, however, indicate

that students prefer teachers feedback to peers feedback (Zhang, 1995; Nelson & Carson,

1998), and that they are more likely to accept the suggestions made by the teacher than

those made by peers (Connor &Asenavage, 1994; Nelson & Carson, 1998). Connor and


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Asenavage (1994) explained that one of the reasons for their students reluctance to include

peers comments in their revisions was a lack of experience in peer review. This is also

supported by Leki (1990) when referring to the potential problems inherits in peer

responses.

In Colombia and other countries, teacher and native speaker feedback has also

proven more effective. Quintero (2008) also carried out a research study in Bogot with

two groups of students: one group of 17 students between 17 and 23 years of age who were

studying Licenciatura en Educacin Bsica Primaria - Ingls at Universidad Distrital

Francisco Jos de Caldas and a group of Canadian students with similar characteristics.

From the qualitative analysis of the data she concluded that feedback from Canadian peers

and from her as teachercontributed to the improvement of Colombian students texts

during the intervention. The impact that this feedback had on students was mainly

motivational since EFL students felt good when they were understood by native speakers of

English. This increased their commitment to language learning.

Similar results were obtained by Blackstone and Harwood (2007) who used blogs

with a group of 120 students from China, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, between 18 and 22

years of age in Singapore. During a year, each student had to post seven comments on their

blogs of at least 250 words. Students worked with a peer so they could revise their texts and

publish the final version. They also attended to training sessions on text revision in which

they were asked to identify and correct grammar mistakes, general organization and

cohesion of the text. The quantitative analysis of the data showed that during the first

semester, 75% of students said they had improved their communicative writing abilities


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through blogging. The percentage rose to 89.3% during the second period. Most of the

students (95.3% of students in the first semester and 96.4% in the second) attributed this

improvement to peers feedback.

On the other hand, students may feel embarrassed correcting others mistakes or

being critical of their work, since they do not know what mistakes to correct (Vurdien,

2001). A similar finding was reported in Wus study (2005), in which students did not post

any views on their peers work because of their lack of confidence; therefore, the blogs

were not interactive. Wu argued that students might not have known what points to

consider or they did not feel qualified enough to manage error correction. Keh (1990)

recommendspeers feedback in language classes but argues that the effectiveness of this

interaction depends largely on a proper preliminary training. According to Vurdien (2001),

it is crucial to teach students how to manage editing so that they are aware of what kind of

errors they are looking for when they read their peers text. Berg (1999) supports this idea

by saying that, after training her students, they were able to make a greater number of

meaningful revisions which improved the quality of learners final texts as opposed to the

superficial ones provided at the beginning of the course.

Other benefits and some disadvantages of blogging

Apart from making students more independent and committed to their learning

process, blogs can produce learning beyond the course. Some students have expressed their

desire to continue blogging after a specific intervention (Ward, 2004; Blackstone, 2007).

Research has shown that there is also a relation (although non-reciprocal) between writing

and reading. Given that blogs have a complex multimodal setting in which readers can


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write comments or react by posting responses, students can adopt different roles: being

readers or becoming authors also which is connected to having an audience (Raith, 2006).

This is also supported by Downes (2004), who says that blogging isnt really about writing

at all, writing is just the end point of the process. According to the author, blogging is about

first, reading but even more important, it is about reading what is of interest to students:

their culture, their community or their ideas. So if students are engaged with the content,

they automatically start reacting by reflecting, criticizing, and questioning. Ware (2004)

carried out a research study in which he surveyed 40 non-native English speakers of high-

intermediate to advanced level from different backgrounds. From the quantitative analysis

of data, he concluded that writing blogs helped students to read blogs and vice versa since

through writing, the writer becomes more aware of the audience and through reading, he or

she becomes more familiar with the corresponding idea of purpose. Zaini (2011) also found

that the blogging process encouraged the students to write more freely since they were

focused on meaning rather than forms. His study included 80 students from English

Language Studies program and Literature program in Malaysia.

Other studies have shown that Internet access is a motivating factor for reading

extensively (Liaw, Chen, & Huang, 2008; Rodzvilla, 2002; Stiler & Philleo, 2003).

Vurdien (2011) adds that as a result of the interactive nature of blogs, they motivate

students to read another language different from their own since they are reading and

writing about a field of their interest and giving their own opinions. This is supported by

Yang (2009) who worked with 43 EFL student teachers in Taiwan and found that when

students read blogs and commented, they did it in expecting of a little discussion, following

their interests, and combining texts and conversations in a very personal and stimulating


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way. But everything is not positive about using blogs for learning language. On the

contrary, there are some researchers who are in disagreement with the use of blogs to

improve reading skills. Wrede (2003) argues that as blogs authors are not usually

professional writers, blogs readers are not generally professional readers either. According

to him, the reading cannot compensate for the weak writing of authors and it could be

characterized by seeing what one wants to see, also because there is superficial and often

inaccurate understanding of the content.

How to implement blogs in EFL classrooms

So the use of blogs has to be carefully designed. According to Lujan-Mora and

Espinosa (2007), teachers have to take into account the purpose of students online written

interaction and which type of blog allows more effectively for its accomplishment when

implementing blogs in an EFL classroom; they also have to consider what kind of activities

students are going to do, the type of blog (one managed by the teacher or one an individual

one by each student), if there will be individual or group work, and the time and frequency

of the interaction.

In Blackstones opinion (2007), it is important to establish what kind of interaction

students are going to have and with which purpose. He, for example, had a group of 145

university students of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in a rural area of Japan, who

worked in parallel cycles of blogging. In first place, each student had to have a blog and

they had to distribute the blog address to all other classmates. Second, students worked

with a blogging buddy, who was a classmate who would read the students blog post

before it was posted. After this, cyclical posting started; every student made at least one

post on a specific topic on his or her blog every two weeks. They were required to read and


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respond to at least three posts made by classmates during each biweekly cycle. In

Blackstones opinion, students need a step by step guidance to achieve class goals, which is

why a careful planning is essential when implementing blogging.

Another way to implement blogs is actually getting real conversations with native

speakers of the language, which is a great opportunity for those students who do not have

the possibility to practice with someone what they are learning in school, especially in

monolingual contexts like ours. This is the case ofQuinteros study (2008), in which her

students had three spaces to interact in: a personal blog, a group blog, and a discussion

blog. In this study, students had a partner too but, instead of an EFL partner, they had

native speakers of the language. Additional to get to know each other, students from

Colombia received feedback from Canadian students related to grammar accuracy,

coherence and also they got encouraging comments to keep studying and improving their

language performance.

Conclusions

From the revision of several research studies, it can be said that blogs contribute to

the improvement of students writing abilities in the foreign language, since they promote a

reflective practice of the language being learned. Such improvement starts with students

being aware of the fact that they are no longer writing for the teacher but for their

classmates and anyone with a connection to the Internet. And when students write thinking

about their readers, they take into account different considerations to assure that the

message will be understood. Aspects like the coherence and cohesion of the text, for

example, take more value and students get into a cyclical process of making a careful


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choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures, organizing ideas, considering the

appropriate register for expressing themselves effectively, checking for spelling errors

before posting their texts, correcting and re-writing ideas, etc. Given that this is a

complicated operation even for native speakers of a language, some teachers have

introduced collaborative work in writing classes for students to help each other when

constructing paragraphs, while they are using and practicing the foreign language to

communicate among them during the writing process.

Although this collaborative writing can be done on paper, in a conventional English

class, through blogs students not only can post their texts for everybody to read them, but

they can also receive feedback from their readers so they can improve the texts and re-write

more accurate and effective pieces; this is what makes blogging interesting and enriching

blogging for students. On the other hand, having students correcting their peers texts is not

simple because students need to know what they are looking for when they have to correct

others. That is why some researchers recommend or to train them in doing this. Depending

on the writing feature that teachers want to improve, students will look for grammar issues,

spelling, wrong expressions, wrong words, wordiness, use of connectors, etc. They can also

use specific guidelines to provide feedback as expected.

These two important processes (collaboration and peer correction) are possible

because of the use of blogs when developing writing abilities in the foreign language. But

there are two more benefits that emerge from blogging in EFL classrooms. One of them is

the cultural interchange to which students are exposed. At the beginning of the interaction,

students certainly will visit their classmates blogs and comment just on them, but if they


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are engaged enough, they will start visiting blogs related to their own interests, for example

in music, movies, actors, etc. This will provide practice in reading and interacting with

native and non-native English speakers, using the foreign language authentically and with a

real purpose. On the other hand, students motivation on learning a new language will not

be a problem after this on-line interaction, since they will be writing about their interests,

they will be using the language for expressing their ideas and thoughts, they will be

meeting new people and communicating with the whole Internet community.

Finally, when planning to implement blogs or any other Web 2.0 tool in language

classes, it is crucial to have a very specific objective to achieve. There are plenty of

possibilities to work on with blogs, and as a consequence, plenty of decisions to make

before implementing them: what students are going to write about, how they are going to

interact, interaction in groups or individual work, which will be the frequency of the

interaction, which kind of blogs is going to be used, who will be the manager, if students

are going to work on just writing or also on reading or speaking. By having a detailed plan,

the whole blogging experience will make students and teachers learn a lot from each other,

while students improve their performance in the language through real communication.


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Documents

Impact of Blogs on Students Writing Abilities in EFL Classrooms